Treatment of Elderly Hypertensive Patients With Diabetes, Renal Disease, and Coronary Heart Disease.

Aging in Westernized industrialized societies is associated with an increasing prevalence of hypertension, type II diabetes mellitus, renal disease, and atherosclerotic vascular disease. This increase in the chronic disease processes in industrialized societies is related, in part, to increasing obesity, reduced physical activity, medications such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory agents, and other environmental influences. Hypertension in the elderly is characterized by high peripheral vascular resistance, reduced baroreflex sensitivity, a low renin state with reduced cardiac output/increased hypertrophy, reduced intravascular volume, and an increased propensity to salt-sensitivity.