Diabetes and arterial hypertension

Type II diabetes and hypertension are two pathologies which are frequently associated in adults, especially in developed countries. All the more so when patients are also obese: obesity is today, and will be in the next future, a true epidemic in these countries. These three pathologies imply a risk for cardiovascular complications much higher than that due to an isolated arterial hypertension. This increased risk is probably due to many factors: hyperglycemia, a dismetabolic syndrome (hyperlipemia, hyperuricemia, thrombophilia, altered Na(+)-H+ membrane exchanges = syndrome X) and hyperinsulinemia which favor atherosclerosis and clinical events. Consequently non-pharmacological and aggressive pharmacological therapy is necessary. Even if the trials done in the last years are questionable and not totally convincing, all researchers agree that lowering blood pressure to normality is the best way to improve prognosis of these patients. Usually for this purpose we need a therapy with more than one drug. Among the antihypertensive drugs, ACE-inhibitors (and perhaps also angiotensin receptor blockers) are preferred, especially in those hypertensives with diabetes who have also microalbuminuria or a frank proteinuria.