The trends of antihypertensive drug prescription based on the Japanese national data throughout the COVID-19 pandemic period

Abstract

In 2020, concerns arose about the potential adverse effects of angiotensin II type 1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) on patients with the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, there is no national data on antihypertensive prescriptions during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. This study aimed to explore the trends in antihypertensive drug prescriptions in Japan throughout COVID-19 pandemic period. This study used data from the National Database (NDB) Open Data in Japan, an annual publication by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. To capture changes before and after social activity restrictions, the present study focused on extracting the number of prescribed oral medicine tablets for outpatients from the NDB Open Data from 2018 to 2021. The fiscal year 2020 exhibited the lowest for both outpatient claims and prescribed drugs. In contrast, all categories of antihypertensive drug prescription showed annual increases, and no specific changes in the prescription patterns of ARBs and ACEIs around fiscal year 2020 were observed. This study implies that antihypertensive drug prescriptions were adequately maintained throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.

Keywords: Angiotensin receptor antagonists; Angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors; Antihypertensive agents; Blood pressure; Epidemiology; Hypertension.

Fig. 1

Trends in antihypertensive drug prescriptions per capita across Japanese regions. The left vertical axis represents total antihypertensive drugs, while the right vertical axis is dedicated to each antihypertensive drug class. Both units are expressed as “prescribed tablets per capita”