Follow Up of Hypertensive Patients at Regional Hospital of Bafoussam, West Cameroon: Biochemical Profiles in Naive and Hypotensive Drug Treated Patients

Objective: The aim of this work was to study the effects of antihypertensive therapies on certain metabolic parameters in hypertensive patients. Methods: A cross-sectional and analytical study conducted within the Bafoussam Re-gional Hospital on 343 patients including 99 normotensives and 244 hyperten-sives distributed in 71 patients naive to treatment and 173 patients under treatment (84 under monotherapy, 67 under bitherapy and 21 under trithera-py). The antihypertensive medications were recorded from the medical records. A questionnaire survey was administered to study participants and potential risk factors for hypertension sought. Blood and urine samples were collected for lipid, renal and hepatic disorder analysis. Two blood pressure measure-ments enabled us to diagnose hypertensive patients. Measurements of bio-chemical parameters such as total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, triglycerides, creatinine, glucose, aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT), alanine aminotransferase (ALT), potassium, chloride and calcium were done in serum by methods resulting from commercial kits. Results: Cal-cium Channel Blockers were significantly associated with increases in blood potassium (odd-ratios (OR) = 8.63, p = 0.036) and sodium (OR = 0.20, p = 0.037). Angiotensin-converting enzyme/Angiotensin II receptor blockers were significantly associated with an increase in plasma activity of ASAT (OR = 0.12, p = 0.03) whereas Diuretics were significantly associated with an increase in ALAT plasma activity (OR = 0.003, p = 0.012). Dual therapies were associ-ated with highest frequencies of hypercreatininemia (41.8%) and hyperglyce-mia (44.8%) whereas hypocholesterolemia HDL (38.1%) was most observed in hypertensive patients on triple therapy. The different therapies resulted in very low frequencies of abnormal liver profiles (in general almost all below 10%). Tritherapy had the most beneficial effects on the different profiles, with no cases of hyperkalemia, glycosuria, hypochloremia, hematuria, hyponatremia, total hypercholesterolemia, ALAT and ASAT hyperactivity. Conclusion: Triple therapy should be recommended as it has the most beneficial effects on met-abolic parameters in the study population.