INDANA - A METAANALYSIS ON INDIVIDUAL PATIENT DATA IN HYPERTENSION - PROTOCOL AND PRELIMINARY-RESULTS

The overall effect of antihypertensive drug treatment has been well do cumented The proportion of patients who benefit varies according to th eir baseline cardiovascular risk, and is small for the majority of peo ple treated. Some investigators propose limiting the treatment target population to patients at high cardiovascular risk, but several assump tions must be made to justify this procedure. The INDANA project is a meta-analysis based on individual patient data, and thus offers the op portunity to check the validity of these assumptions. Its main objecti ve is to identify responders (and non-responders) in the drug treatmen t of hypertension. The rationale and methods for such an approach are presented here, with the solution for some technical problems. The con clusion of the data collection has shown that the project is feasible. The results of the main analysis should be available in 1996, and sho uld contribute to the selection of responders and to the individualiza tion of the treatment of hypertension.