Comparative clinical study on the efficacy of Psidium guajava bark and Terminalia arjuna bark in the management of Hypertension

Abstract

Hypertension (HTN) is one of the disease of global concern in the present day. It is one of the leading causes of Heart diseases and strokes. Hence it is important to maintain the normal blood pressure of around 120/80 mm of Hg. Many medicines have been included in the group of anti-hypertensive drugs like calcium channel blocker, beta blockers etc which are effective in the management of hypertension. Many herbal drugs are also being used for the management of Hypertension like Sarpagandha, Asvagandha, Arjuna etc in Ayurvedic medicine since a long time. Inspite of their use, the use is limited to mild to moderate cases of Hypertension. Hence a quest for a new plant based drug, having anti-hypertensive properties is searched. Psidium guajava, which is used for its fruits is found to have similar properties to drugs like Arjuna is selected for the study, for comparing clinically the efficacy of the stem bark of both the plant in the management of HTN. 40 uncomplicated HTN patients were selected for the study based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria and were administered with the stem bark of PG for group A and stem bark of TA for group B. Observations and results have shown that both the drugs are equally effective in reducing the parameters of the study like headache, palpitations, insomnia, systolic HTN, Diastolic HTN and Anxiety. From the overall effect of the study, it has been observed that PG have shown a slight better overall improvement in the maintenance of the HTN than Arjuna. Even though the efficacy is not significantly different for both the groups. Thus from the study it can be concluded that as both the medicines have shown equal efficacy in reducing HTN, they can be used as substitute drugs to each other in the management of HTN. No adverse events were noted during the study in both the groups, indicating that the drugs are safe to use and do not cause any harmful effects.