The German Hypertension League (Deutsche Hochdruckliga) Quality Seal Protocol for blood pressure-measuring devices: 15-year experience and results from 105 devices for home blood pressure control.

Objective: The German Hypertension League (Deutsche Hochdruckliga) established a program to assess the accuracy and reliability of blood pressure (BP)-measuring devices in 1999 (Quality Seal Protocol). Here, we report on the results of a testing series of 105 devices designed for BP self-measurement.

Methods: The test protocol for the validation of upper-arm, wrist, and finger devices was developed to compare device to conventional Riva-Rocci measurements based on five criteria: mean systolic and mean diastolic differences, their standard deviations, and a point score representing the correlation of systolic and diastolic errors of individual comparisons.

Complementary and alternative drug therapy versus science-oriented medicine.

This opinion deals critically with the so-called complementary and alternative medical (CAM) therapy on the basis of current data. From the authors' perspective, CAM prescriptions and most notably the extensive current endeavours to the "integration" of CAM into conventional patient care is problematic in several respects. Thus, several CAM measures are used, although no specific effects of medicines can be proved in clinical studies.

Treatment resistant hypertension--investigation and conservative management.

Background: The introduction of invasive treatments, some of which are irreversible, for the entity called treatment-resistant hypertension (TRH) creates the need for a comprehensive discussion of the diagnostic evaluation that TRH requires and the available options for its conservative treatment.

Method: The pertinent literature is selectively reviewed in the light of the authors' longstanding clinical experience.

Results: Our review of the literature suggests that the high prevalence of TRH in Germany (ca.

[Hypertension therapy--never without diuretics?].

Diuretics are highly effective and are valuable antihypertensives in modern high blood pressure therapy. As a monotherapy, diuretics should be preferably be used in elderly patients; in a combination therapy, in any case in a triple combination therapy, they should be used regardless of the patient's age. Disadvantages include risk for developing hypokalaemia, their diabetogenicity with unclear long-term prognosis and the usually limited treatment persistence.

Refinement of the critical region for MCKD1 by detection of transcontinental haplotype sharing.

Background: Autosomal-dominant medullary cystic kidney disease type 1 (MCKD1) [OMIM 174000] is a hereditary nephropathy that leads to renal salt wasting and end-stage renal failure at a median age of 62 years. In a Welsh MCKD1 kindred we have recently demonstrated linkage to the MCKD1 locus on chromosome 1q23.1 and refined the critical MCKD1 region to <3.