Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and arterial hypertension: drug interaction-adjusted management of patients

Abstract

Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are the most common drugs in clinical practice and account for 5–10% of all drugs prescribed each year. However, the use of this group of drugs is associated with the risk of a wide range of side effects, most of which are cardiovascular complications. In addition, NSAIDs interact with other drugs, for example, their effect on antihypertensive therapy has recently been recognized as particularly important. Improvement of not only efficacy, but also safety is another important principle of rational pharmacotherapy. Adverse drug reactions (ADR) can very often result from underlying genetic factors of the human body. In this regard, a personalized approach suggesting the prescription of drugs according to the individual characteristics of patients is especially important. In such cases, pharmacogenetic testing is the most promising method that identifies the genetic factors of patients and allows to predict patients’ responses to specific drugs. This applies especially to a large range of drugs metabolised via the cytochrome P450 system in the liver. Results from numerous studies show that the effect of P450 family gene polymorphism determines the individual sensitivity to antihypertensive drugs, as it is these isozymes that are involved in the metabolism of drugs used to treat arterial hypertension (AH). In particular, the cytochrome (CYP) 450 isoenzyme is one of the basic enzymes involved in the biotransformation of losartan, an angiotensin receptor antagonist. Therefore, the CYP2C9 gene polymorphism largely determines the pharmacological response to NSAIDs and affects the effectiveness of antihypertensive therapy due to the change in the drug metabolism, as well as the structure and function of the receptors, on which they have an effect.