Antihypertensive medications and chronopharmacology: role of Saudi pharmacists in patient education

Objective: This study aims to evaluate the practice and knowledge of Saudi pharmacists regarding chronopharmacology of antihypertensive drugs.
Method: A Descriptive cross – sectional questionnaire based survey of randomly selected community pharmacists from Riyadh city in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in March and April 2014. Sample consisted of randomly selected 100 community pharmacists.
Results: 100% of participants agreed that physical activity, stress, environmental, and endocrine alterations affect daily blood pressure. However, 35% did not know that blood pressure has two peaks; around 9:00 am and 7:00 pm, and one drop around 3:00 am. In addition, 24% of pharmacists did not know whether or not evening dose of nifedipine and GTN was more successful in decreasing the blood pressure as compared to the early hours in the morning.
Conclusion: Our study shows that knowledge and practice of community pharmacists need further improvement about interaction between  time of administration of anti-hypertensive drugs and its efficacy.