Interacciones medicamento – nutriente y medicamento – planta medicinal en el tratamiento farmacológico de hipertensión arterial: revisión sistemática. Cuenca, 2018

Abstract

BACKGROUND Patients suffering from certain pathology, especially a chronic one as in the case of arterial hypertension, are exposed to a high risk of incorrect combinations between prescribed medications and nutrients or medicinal plants that can cause negative health effects. AIM Synthesize the scientific evidence on the clinically relevant aspects of drug-nutrient and drug-medicinal plant interactions in the pharmacological treatment of arterial hypertension. METHODOLOGY The study corresponds to a qualitative systematic review of articles of primary origin on the interactions of drugs used in the treatment of arterial hypertension with nutrients or medicinal plants. The drug on which the study was focused is methyldopa. RESULTS We obtained 2,640 articles by means of the search equations designed for this study. Of these, one article was selected according to the established inclusion criteria. In this article, the antagonistic interaction between methyldopa and iron was reported. The methodological quality of the study published in this article was evaluated through the GRADE scale, qualifying it as moderate.

CONCLUSIONS Co-administration of methyldopa with iron-rich foods or with iron supplementation should be avoided in consideration of the pharmacological interaction of antagonist type reported between this antihypertensive drug and iron. Additionally, an important gap has been identified in the knowledge of this type of interactions based on the small number of articles found on this specific topic, so it is desirable that more studies will be developed in the future.