Imidapril, one of the ACE inhibitor, has been used to treate hypertension, congestive heart failure, diabetes mellitus and renal disease. ACE inhibitor, however often causes dry cough and this adverse effect affects the compliance rate negatively. This report aimed to examine the incidence rate of coughing caused by Imidapril treat-ment. And we compared the results with the incidence and tendency of dry cough caused by the other ACE inhibitors.

This study enrolled 38 patients who followed up at internal medicine and took Imidapril from the period of May 9, 1997 to December 17, 1997. We tested its effectiveness, safety and tolerance. The initial dosage of it was 5mg/day and the maximum dosage according to blood pressure was 10mg/day for 8 weeks. The tendency and the incidence of dry cough have been analyzed and compared with recently published Korean reports.

The 5 mg dosage of Imidapril showed 68.1% in lowering blood pressure rate and it went up to 81.8% during the 8 weeks treatment perriod. The blood pressure regularity rate was 36.3% after the 8 weeks treatment. The overall rate of adverse effect occurrence was 26.1% (6/23) and 8.7% of them were likely to cough. One of the patients who showed nausea stopped medication. The recent articles reported that the incidence of dry cough had been reduced:Enalapril (33.8%), Fosinopril (16%), Ramipril (15%), Imidapril (7.8 - 8.7%), Losartan (4.3%).

Imidapril is as safe and effective as other ACE inhibitors. Various ACE inhibitors that were newly developed show their effectiveness in lessening incidence rate of dry cough, and Imidapril is thought to be an excellent drug for this matter. Even though Losartan shows the lowest incidence rate of dry cough, it needs to more regular usages since it is still on the stage of its medical adaptation.