[Chronotherapy of hypertension].

Blunted blood pressure (BP) decline during night-time leads to the higher risk of cardiovascular events in hypertensive patients. Therefore, to improve the prognosis of the patients, it is essential for properly controlling BP during night-time sleep as well as day-time activity. In addition, the dosing-time dependent changes are observed in the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of some antihypertensive drugs. Thus, the efficacy and toxicity of drugs might be affected by their dosing-time. Chronotherapy is the therapeutic application of chronopharmacology and chronotoxicology to enhance the effectiveness and tolerance of drugs by determining optical dosing-time of drugs from a circadian perspective. In this article, chronotherapy of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor, Ca channel blocker, α1 blocker, diuretics and angiotensin II receptor blocker will be discussed.