Background: Hypertension (HTN) is one of the important risk factors for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in diabetic subjects. Tight control of HTN prevents or retards both micro vascular and macro vascular complications.
Aim &objective: To compare safety and efficacy of beta blockers in diabetic patients to those on calcium channel blockers as additional antihypertensive agents.
Material & Method: After institutional ethics committee approval and obtaining written informed consent patients’ were divided into two groups. Group A BB (n=30) and Group B CCB (n=40). The present study was designed to compare clinical and biochemical parameters of BBs versus CCBs as additional antihypertensive agents in diabetic patients. It was designed as an open – label parallel group comparative clinical study.
Results: Both BB and CCB reduced the systolic and diastolic blood pressures. But the reductions in systolic and diastolic BP were not significantly different for the two drug groups. However, CCB caused a significantly greater reduction in BMI when compared to BB. Fasting plasma insulin levels were raised by adding BB to type 2 DM patients whereas the levels were reduced by CCBs .However this was not statistically significant. BB raised the levels of FBS & TC and reduced HDL cholesterol levels which were opposite in effect to that seen with CCBs and were statistically significant. HBA1clevels were raised by BBs and lowered by CCBs, which was statistically highly significant.
Conclusion: Except in co-morbid conditions of ischemic heart diseases, especially following acute MI, CCBs rather than BBs, appear to be better agents to be combined with ACEIs/ ARBs for effective control of blood pressure in diabetics.