Single-pill combinations, hypertension control and clinical outcomes: potential, pitfalls and solutions.

One relatively simple and potentially scalable approach to improving hypertension control is greater use of single-pill combinations (SPC) containing two or more different classes of antihypertensive medications as initial and add-in therapy [[4], [6], [8], [10], [12]]. 5 ComboRx: combination treatment with two anti-hypertensive medication either as a single-pill or separate pill; SPC: single-pill combination antihypertensive therapy; FEC: free equivalent combination single antihypertensive medication, two antihypertensive medications as two separate pills with same medications comparator SPC. SPC accounted for 6.3% of antihypertensive medication prescriptions and 12.3% of antihypertensive medications within the top 300 (Table 3) [[21]]. Thus, it often takes two years or more of uncontrolled hypertension before antihypertensive medication is added or the dose increased for an existing medication. [Extracted from the article]