Abstract
Objectives: To study the effects of atenolol and captopril on lipid profile parameters including total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), High density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c), Low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) and atherogenic index (AI) in serum. Moreover to compare the effects of these drugs on the above parameters with each other.Patients and Methods: One hundred hypertensive patients were involved in this study which were divided into two groups each of 50 patients. Patients in the first group were on atenolol and the patients in the second group were on captopril. All of the cases of hypertension were of the primary type (essential) as the patients were diagnosed by specialist physicians. The patients included were not chronically using any other drugs, nor having family history of hyperlipidemia, and not suffering from any other chronic disease. The ages of the patients in the first group ranged from 35-74 years with a mean of 55±5.02 years, while the ages of the second group ranged from 36-80 years with a mean of 57±6.0 years. Another group of 50 normal individuals participated in this study as a control group, with ages ranged from 35-72 years with a mean of 53±4.4 years. Results: The results of this study showed that serum TG and AI were significantly higher in atenolol using group in comparison with the control group, while serum HDL-c concentration was significantly lower. Whereas, the remaining lipid profile parameters studied were not significantly different from the control group. Serum LDL-c concentration was significantly low in captopril using group compared with the control group whereas the remaining lipid parameters studied were not significantly changed in this group. Further analysis of the results of the present study indicated significant decreases of serum TG and AI in captopril using group in comparison with Atenolol using group. Whereas, serum HDL-c concentration was significantly higher in captopril using group. Conclusion: The overall analysis of the lipid profile parameters studied might suggest that atenolol has certain undesirable effects on these parameters while captopril has less undesirable effects. This might indicate that captopril seems to be more suitable antihypertensive agent than atenolol for patients with lipid profile abnormalities.Keywords: Serum, lipid profile, triglyceride, total cholesterol, HDL-c, LDL-c, atherogenic index, hypertension.
