Refractory hypertension in childhood--efficacy of captopril therapy.

Because of the advance of techniques and age-matched apparatus for blood pressure measurement, and because of the availability of age-related normal values in childhood, the knowledge of the number of children having elevated blood pressures has recently improved. In a group of healthy children, the first important task is to determine how many incidences of "essential hypertension" there are among them, which may appear in childhood and persist into adulthood. This should urge us to undertake periodical examinations of healthy children. On the other hand, the treatment of "secondary hypertension" has similarly been improved. Since 1979 in particular, captopril, an orally active angiotensin I-converting enzyme inhibitor, has successfully been administered to treat children with malignant hypertension and who respond poorly to conventional antihypertensive therapies. We report 3 cases that received captopril for refractory hypertension: a 2-year-old boy with renal and renovascular anomalies, a 7-year-old boy with moyamoya disease after surgical operation, and a 17-year-old youth with Cushingoid syndrome due to chronic administration of steroids against mixed connective tissue disease. After the introduction of captopril, good pressure control was obtained in all 3 cases, although reasonable effects of measurement values of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (decrease in angiotensin I & II, increase in I/II ratio, etc.) were found only in the first case.