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Hypertension is a well-known cardiovascular risk. Patients with end-stage renal diseases frequently suffer hypertension. Furthermore, daily variations of blood pressure are relatively large in patients treated with hemodialysis, partly due to ultrafiltration. Twenty hypertensive patients with end-stage renal diseases whose blood pressure was controlled by a single antihypertensive agent, either angiotensin receptor antagonist (ARB) or calcium channel blocker (CCB), were enrolled into the study. Home blood pressure measurements were also performed. Average systolic and diastolic blood pressures were similar between two agents. However, variations of systolic blood pressure during ARB treatment were greater than those of CCB, and maximal differences in daily systolic blood pressure during treatment with ARB (19 ± 7 mmHg) were greater than those with CCB (14 ± 6 mmHg, p < 0.01). Systolic blood pressure measured after hemodialysis under ARB therapy (110 ± 6 mmHg) was lower than that of CCB (118 ± 6 mmHg, p < 0.05). Daily variations of diastolic blood pressure were similar between ARB and CCB periods. Our results indicate that variations of systolic blood pressure during ARB treatment are larger than CCB, and suggest that CCB is useful to obtain the better quality of blood pressure control, improving blood pressure stability by preventing substantial drops in blood pressure in hypertensive patients with end-stage renal diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on septuagenarian patients who visited the outpatient clinic of nephrology division. The study revealed that incidence of herpes zoster (HZ) has increased with the progression in the stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD). However, the patients with CKD stages 1,2 or 3 has low incidence rate compared with septuagenarian HZ patients without kidney disease.

The article discusses a comparative study between non-diabetic chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients treated with amlodipine and benidipine. The results revealed the superiority of benidipine over amlodipine in renoprotection as the anti-hypertensive supplement to the RAS inhibitor when similar blood pressure levels are attained. The study suggests that the influence on augmentation index (AI) varies among types of calcium chemical blockers (CCB) in patients with CKD.