title: Long-term outcomes of lercanidipine versus other calcium channel blockers in newly diagnosed hypertension: a nationwide cohort study.
abstract: Calcium channel blockers (CCBs) have been proved to have beneficial effects on cardiovascular (CV) outcomes, especially in stroke. Lercanidipine, a highly lipophilic CCB, lacks data regarding long-term outcomes including: CV, stroke, renal and all-cause mortality. This retrospective cohort study aims to clarify this.
  
  
  
  A total of 144,630 newly diagnosed hypertension (HTN) patients (age: 18-65 years) in 2005 from the Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database were enrolled in this observational study. A pure hypertension population was fetched by excluding all chronic diseases in the Charlson Comorbidities Index. Patients were stratified into the lercanidipine group (n = 1303) and the propensity-score-matched comparative group (nifedipine, amlodipine or felodipine, n = 15,301).
  
  
  
  Compared to other CCBs, lercanidipine didn't have a significant difference on the study endpoints. In individual head-to-head comparisons, lercanidipine was shown to be superior to nifedipine in incident stroke with an adjusted HR with 95% CI of 0.526 (0.347-0.797) (p = .0025). The key limitations were that personal variables, such as smoking habits, alcohol intake, body mass index and physical activity and blood pressure profiles were not available in the nationwide registry database.
  
  
  
  In newly diagnosed patients with hypertension, lercanidipine was superior to nifedipine in the six-year period when the analyzed endpoint was stroke.
authors.affiliation: a Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine , Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital , Kaohsiung , Taiwan.|b Faculty of Medicine, College of Medicine , Kaohsiung Medical University , Kaohsiung , Taiwan.
authors.forename: Kai-Hung
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: c Department of Ophthalmology , Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital , Kaohsiung , Taiwan.|d Department of Ophthalmology , Kaohsiung Municipal Hsiao-kang Hospital , Kaohsiung , Taiwan.|j Department of Optometry , Shu-Zen Junior College of Medicine and Management , Kaohsiung , Taiwan.
authors.forename: Kai-Chun
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: e Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery , Ministry of Health and Welfare Pingtung Hospital , Pingtung , Taiwan.
authors.forename: Kai-Yuan
authors.initials: KY
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: f School of Pharmacy , Kaohsiung Medical University , Kaohsiung , Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yi-Hsin
authors.initials: YH
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: g Division of Comparative Medicine , Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge , MA , USA.|h Department of Pathology , Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School , Boston , MA , USA.
authors.forename: Chung-Wei
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: i Department of Internal Medicine , Kaohsiung Municipal United Hospital , Kaohsiung , Taiwan.
authors.forename: Wen-Ter
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Lai
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D017311:Amlodipine / Q000627:therapeutic use; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000187:drug effects*; D002121:Calcium Channel Blockers / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004095:Dihydropyridines / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D015736:Felodipine / Q000627:therapeutic use; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000188:drug therapy*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D020521:Stroke / Q000453:epidemiology; D013624:Taiwan; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D002121:Calcium Channel Blockers; D004095:Dihydropyridines; D017311:Amlodipine; D015736:Felodipine; C060343:lercanidipine
keywords: Calcium channel blocker; cardiovascular mortality; chronic kidney disease; lercanidipine; peripheral vascular disease; stroke