OR-65: Losartan/angiotensin II antagonists have greater persistence than other antihypertensive agents/classes

Despite the availability of numerous antihypertensive agents, medication persistence is quite varied. This may contribute to the ∼30% of treated hypertensive patients who have uncontrolled blood pressure. We assessed 12-month persistence rates among patients receiving initial antihypertensive therapy over the period 6/1/98 to 5/31/00 using pharmacy claims from the Merck-Medco Managed Care database. Patients were considered persistent if they had drug on hand from a recent refill 12 months after initially beginning treatment. We evaluated persistence by most commonly prescribed agent within class (as a direct comparator of individual agents), overall class, and when the initial prescription was a fixed-dose combination with a diuretic. There were 119,823 agent-level and 257,532 class-level patient records studied; the mean age was 56 years with 56% female. Persistence rates for the most commonly prescribed agent within each class were significantly greater for losartan when compared to lisinopril, amlodipine, atenolol and HCTZ (P