Study backs Novartis hypertension drug combination

Patients with high blood pressure treated with a combination of a Novartis hypertension drug and a generic medicine do better than if they take only one of the drugs alone, trial data released on Thursday showed. The results of a study known as Accelerate also showed that patients who switched from single drug treatment to combined therapy improved their response, but not to the same level as those who started their treatment with the combination.

The findings, by researchers at the Swiss drugmaker and at Britain's University of Cambridge, could boost prospects for Novartis's Tekamlo tablet, a single-pill treatment which combines the two drugs tested – aliskiren, also made by Novartis, and the generic blood pressure medicine amlodipine. "One of the benefits we think will come out of this research is that patients should now receive combination therapy from the start (of their treatment)," said Morris Brown at Cambridge University, who led the study. Experts not directly involved in the research, which was published in The Lancet medical journal, agreed and said treatment guidelines should now be changed. "Accelerate puts into proper context the importance of starting with combination antihypertensives to lower blood pressure towards guideline goals for the general population ... A change in guidelines is clearly necessary," Ivana Lazich and George Bakris of the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in the United States wrote in a commentary.