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The effects of beta-adrenergic blockade, using oxprenolol, were studied in plasma renin activity, urinary sodium excretion and blood pressure in ten normal subjects and in 120 patients with essential and renovascular hypertension. Blood pressure was reduced by oxprenolol administration. The hypotensive action of the drug was independent of either the basal plasma renin activity or of the plasma renin activity response. Oxprenolol decreased plasma renin activity in normal subjects and in patients with essential hypertension with normal or high basal plasma renin activity. Patients with low plasma renin activity may show a lack of response to the beta-blockade. In patients with renovascular disease the response of plasma renin activity to oxprenolol was not a discriminant factor between patients cured or not cured by surgery. Some renovascular patients were unresponsive to beta-blockade with oxprenolol.

A double-blind, cross-over study in 16 patients with essential hypertension was carried out, to evaluate any possible interference by indomethacin, a known prostaglandin-synthetase inhibitor, with the antihypertensive effect of oxprenolol, a non-selective beta-adrenoceptor blocking agent. Both indomethacin and oxprenolol, as well as the two drugs combined, inhibited plasma renin activity; no change was found in urinary sodium excretion or body weight. Oxprenolol alone caused a highly significant decrease in the systolic ( - 10.4 mmHg, p less than 0.001), diastolic ( - 7.4 mmHg, p less than 0.001) and mean ( - 7.7 mmHg, p less than 0.01) blood pressures, whereas indomethacin did not influence blood pressure. When the two drugs were given in combination, blood pressure decreased (systolic: - 5.9 mmHg; diastolic: - 4.0 mmHg; mean: - 4.6 mmHg), but the changes induced in blood pressure were reduced by about 50% when compared with those in the oxprenolol alone period. The data show that indomethacin seems to interfere with the antihypertensive effect of oxprenolol, by an action which may be due to the inhibition of prostaglandin synthesis.