Minoxidil and the Treatment of Severe Hypertension

Abstract

MINOXIDIL (Loniten), a piperidino-pyrimidine derivative (Fig. 1), is an unusually potent vasodilator of unique value in treating patients with severe hypertension. After 11 years of clinical investigations, it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in October 1979 for treatment of patients who cannot tolerate or respond to a conventional three-drug antihypertensive regimen. Initially, trials were limited to such patients because of experiments that showed a right atrial hemorrhagic lesion in dogs, which proved to be specific to this species. Trials of efficacy and safety are currently under way in less severely hypertensive patients but have not as yet . . .