Best time for taking antihypertensive medication

Excerpt from article by Thomas Khan Department of Cardiology, Danderyd University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

Nighttime blood pressure shows a higher association to future adverse cardiac events than day time blood pressure. This has been taken to suggest that taking the medication at night may improve nocturnal blood pressure control .

The recent publication of the TIME study provides important new information to the issue. (Treatment in the morning vs evening time).

This prospective decentralised randomised open parallel group study in the United Kingdom , randomised patients 18 years or older , with hypertension and treated by at least one antihypertensive medication to take medications in the morning or in the evening . 19 386 patients completed the study.

While specific side effects were somewhat more common in the morning group , non specific adverse events and frequent visits to the toilet were more common in the evening group.

Results of the study indicate that taking the medication in the evening did not reduce the risk for cardiovascular events or mortality and further studies are needed .