Double-blind clinical evaluation of dimetophrine in chronically reduced arterial tension.
Thirty in-patients with chronically reduced arterial blood pressure and relevant subjective symptoms were treated over a 15-day period with oral doses of either 400 mg dimetophrine twice daily or placebo, according to a prospective, randomized, double-blind design. Systolic and diastolic blood pressures and heart rate were monitored at 5-day interval: subjective specific symptoms (scored 0 to 3 in order of increasing severity), haematology and haematochemistry were recorded before and after treatment. Both systolic and diastolic blood pressures increased significantly after dimetophrine all through the observation period. After 5 days, systolic blood pressure had already reached significantly higher values in comparison with the placebo-treated group, as did diastolic blood pressure by the 10th day. Overall, during the observation period, an increase from 82.7 +/- 1.0 to 112.3 +/- 2.1 mmHg was observed in systolic and from 54.3 +/- 1.3 to 62.7 +/- 1.4 mmHg in diastolic blood pressure with dimetophrine, whereas with placebo, systolic blood pressure increased from 80.4 +/- 1.5 to 93.7 +/- 2.9 mmHg and diastolic blood pressure remained unchanged (53.3 +/- 1.4 mmHg). Concomitantly, heart rate decreased significantly with dimetophrine from 88.1 +/- 2.5 to 77.2 +/- 1.4 beats/min, whereas it remained almost unchanged with placebo (from 83.9 +/- 2.5 to 80.0 +/- 1.9 beats/min). The associated symptoms (asthenia, paleness, drowsiness, fatigue, sweating, vertigo and headache) were largely relieved by dimetophrine (70.0% decrease) but not by placebo (37.4%). All symptoms except drowsiness and vertigo were reduced to a significantly larger extent with dimetophrine than with placebo.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002317:Cardiovascular Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D004361:Drug Tolerance; D004983:Ethanolamines / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D007022:Hypotension / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000503:physiopathology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011897:Random Allocation; D013997:Time Factors
D002317:Cardiovascular Agents; D004983:Ethanolamines; C100197:dimethophrine