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Many patients with resistant hypertension have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). To determine whether treating OSA improves blood pressure (BP) in such patients, researchers in Brazil randomized 40 patients with resistant hypertension and OSA to receive medical treatment alone or medical treatment plus continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). All patients had inadequately controlled BP (mean, 162/97 mm Hg) despite taking at least three antihypertensive drugs, and all had apnea/hypopnea indexes ≥15 per hour (mean, 29/hour).
Twenty-four-hour ambulatory BP monitoring at 6 months (compared with baseline) showed that mean daytime systolic and diastolic BP increased by 3 mm Hg and 2 mm Hg, respectively, in the control group and decreased by 7 mm H…