Can aerobic exercise complement antihypertensive drugs to achieve blood pressure control in individuals with essential hypertension?

Achieving adequate blood pressure (BP) control with antihypertensive medication remains an elusive goal for many patients. The advances in knowledge of hypertension and the increasingly improved upon therapeutic strategies seem not to guarantee even sustainable control rates at the population level. In addition, patients who either discontinue their medications or are non-adherent to drug therapy run the risk of developing uncontrolled BP. Number of daily tablets more than two and number of daily drug administration at least three have been associated with poor adherence with drug therapy. However, BP control seems to go beyond adherence with drug therapy as there are other associated factors. Studies have demonstrated beneficial effect of aerobic exercise in the prevention and management of hypertension. It appears, however, that the majority of these studies failed to explore the possible additive or synergistic effect of aerobic exercise on antihypertensive drugs such that fewer drugs would be required to achieve BP control or that the BP control rate would be increased with the same number of drugs. This review presents the evidence for poor BP control in the general population, and the possible means and process of aerobic exercise complementing antihypertensive drug therapy in order to achieve higher BP control rates.