Treatment of hypertension due to immunosuppressive therapy after solid organ transplantation - pharmacological approach.

ABSTRACT Solid organs transplantation procedures have been performed for over half a century. Growing knowledge of immune response and development of new immunosuppressive regiments guarantee more and more successful outcomes. However, many of the applied drugs lead to cardiovascular complications, the most frequent of which is hypertension. This paper describes epidemiology, pathogenetic mechanisms and treatment of hypertension induced by immunosuppressive medication. The main impact is focused on drugs belonging to the following groups: calcineurin inhibitors (CNI), the inhibitors of the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and glucocorticosteroids (GS). We analyze the mechanism of action of the main hypertensive drugs and their influence on the reversing hypertonic action of the immunosuppressive agents. In the absence of current guidelines addressing this problem, this paper is an attempt to fill the gap, helping clinicians to choose proper medication.