Abstract
Aims: To survey the changes in serum lipid profiles in patients with hypertension up to 12 months, and to investigate correlations between these values and the time after the start of olmesartan monotherapy. Methods: We retrospectively examined longitudinal changes in serum lipid profiles in patients with mild to moderate hypertension that had been newly treated with olmesartan monotherapy. Data from 139, 150, 185 and 188 patients were obtained for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), triglyceride (TG) and total cholesterol (TC) levels, respectively, from the Clinical Data Warehouse of Nihon University School of Medicine. Generalized estimating equations and generalized linear mixed model with an inverse probability of treatment weighting method were used to analyze the relationships between these longitudinal blood examination data and explanatory variables of patient sex, age, diagnosis of diabetes mellitus (DM) and duration of olmesartan monotherapy. Results: Serum HDL-C and TC levels were associated with sex, but not with age, diagnosis of DM or duration of treatment. TG level was associated with the diagnosis of DM, but not with sex, age or treatment duration. LDL-C level was not associated with any of the explanatory variables. Subgroup analysis of the subjects divided by diagnosis of DM revealed a decrease in TC level in non-DM subjects (p = 0.0284), but not in DM subjects. Dunnett’s multiple-comparison test showed that none of the lipid parameters were changed significantly compared with baseline at any time point. Conclusions: Our study revealed that HDL-C, LDL-C, TG and TC levels were not influenced by olmesartan monotherapy up to 12 months. With respect to lipid metabolism, olmesartan may be used safely for patients with hypertension, because the effect on lipids may be negligible.
