A comparative study on efficacy of nebivolol versus atenolol on blood pressure in patients with essential hypertention in a tertiary care hospital at Visakhapatnam

Objective: This study was conducted to assess and compare the safety, efficacy and tolerability of nebivolol and atenolol in the patients with stage 1(moderate) essential hypertension, and the incidence of side effects with the two drugs. Materials and Methods: This is a double blinded randomized controlled parallel comparative study conducted at King George Hospital, Vishakapatnam. Sample size of 140 patients diagnosed with hypertension, belonging to either sex, between age group 18 to 55 years were randomly selected. The patients were allocated into two groups of 70 patients each and treated for 12 weeks. The patients were followed for every two weeks throughout the study period. Results and Conclusions: Statistical analysis was done for comparing the blood pressures between the two study groups. The results shows that mean reduction of systolic blood pressure with nebivolol is 14.52 ± 2.68 mmHg (P < 0.001) and that with atenolol is 8.8 ± 4.037 mmHg (P < 0.2), the mean reduction of diastolic blood pressure with nebivolol is 8.92 ± 3.73 mmHg (P < 0.001) and that with atenolol is 6.88 ± 2.219 mmHg (P < 0.2).The mean heart rate, ADRs before and after the study with nebivolol and atenolol were observed recorded and assessed. Thus, it can be concluded that nebivolol is better than atenolol in terms of safety, efficacy and tolerability.