Vol 13, No 5 (2009)
Review paper
Published online: 2009-12-04
Gender-related differences in the management of arterial hypertension in women
Nadciśnienie tętnicze 2009;13(5):349-361.
Abstract
In case of female patients, because of estrogens’ protective
influence, cardiovascular complications appear in average
10 years later than in case of men. Appropriately, problem
of arterial hypertension in case of young and middle-aged
population is also more pronounced in men than women.
Nevertheless, after the menopause number of hypertensive
women quickly rises and in the population of patients above
60 years old arterial hypertension is even more frequent in
case of female than male gender. Guidelines for the nonpharmacological
and pharmacological management of arterial
hypertension, its classification and therapeutic goals are
the same for the non-pregnant women as for the general
population. According to the guidelines, each drug from the
five main groups of antihypertensives can be used as a first
choice treatment, the individual health status and concomitant
disorders should be taken into consideration while deciding.
In recent metaanalyses and most of the up to date
large clinical trials no significant differences were found between
sexes in the strength of hypotensive effect, neither in
the risk reduction achieved with specified antihypertensive
agents. Still the obvious anatomic and physiological differences
between sexes cannot be disdained as they may have
an impact on effectiveness and safety of the antihypertensive
treatment. An important issue is also the age of a woman
with hypertension. Theoretical premises exist, confirmed by
results from singular clinical studies, that in case of women
in their childbearing age the optimal treatment would be
with the use of calcium channel blockers (because of their
stronger in women than in men hypotensive effect) or β-blockers (influencing the symphathetic activity - an important
patophysiological pathway in case of young patients).
Agents influencing the renin-angiotensin-aldosteron system such as angiotensin converting enzyme
inhibitors (ACE-I) or angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARB)
can be used safely only together with effective contraceptive
methods. In case of women after the menopause the best
option seems to be monotherapy or polytherapy with: ACE-I
or ARB (no negative impact on glucose or cholesterol level,
positive influence on the heart and vessel wall remodeling,
significant decrease in the number of complications), diuretics
(to overcome the problem of fluid retention) and calcium
channel blockers (good hypotensive effect, stronger in
women than men). In women the risk of stroke is bigger
than the risk of ischemic cardiac complications compared
with the male population, though also mainly those three
groups of drugs are indicated. There is a lack of properly
designed, large clinical trials focused on the problem of gender-
related differences in the effectiveness and safety of antihypertensive
treatment. Accessible data origin mainly from
metaanalyses and post-hoc analyses of the studies in which
women are largely outnumbered by male patients.
Keywords: arterial hypertensionantihypertensive treatmentwomengender-related differences