Increased prevalence of cardiovascular complications in women with furosemide resistant essential hypertension.

Patients with essential hypertension (n=2969) who had not been taking any blood pressure medication for longer than 1 week were classified as furosemide-sensitive (FS) if their diastolic BP after furosemide fell ≥10% and furosemide-resistant (FR) if it fell less than that. The FS group was significantly (P≤.05) older, and had higher blood pressure than the FR group. In patients over age 50, the prevalence of cardiovascular complications (myocardial infarction, stroke, angina, congestive heart failure, and intermittent claudication) in the FR group (12.3%) was significantly (P=.0039) more than in the FS group for all patients, and especially for women (P=.0053)