Telmisartan With or Without Hydrochlorothiazide in Patients With Mild-to-moderate Hypertension

Inclusion Criteria:

• History of mild-to-moderate hypertension

• Patients who fail to respond adequately to telmisartan monotherapy

• Participants between 18 and 80 years of age

• Ability to provide written informed consent

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients taking more than three anti-hypertensive medications at the screening visit

• Pre-menopausal women (last menstruation ≤ 1 year prior to start of screening)

• Who are not surgically sterile (hysterectomy, tubal ligation)

• Who are NOT practicing acceptable means of birth control or who do NOT plan tocontinue using an acceptable method throughout the study

• Any women:

• Who has a positive serum pregnancy test at screening (Visit 1) or baseline (Visit

• Who is nursing

• Hepatic and/or renal dysfunction as defined by the following laboratory parameters:

• SGPT (ALT) (serum glutamate pyruvate transaminase) or SGOT (AST) (serum glutamateoxaloacetate transaminase) greater than two times the upper limit of normal

• Serum creatinine > 2.3 mg/dL

• Clinically relevant sodium depletion, hyperkalemia, or hypokalemia at baseline

• Known or suspected secondary hypertension

• Bilateral renal artery stenosis; renal artery stenosis in a solitary kidney;post-renal transplant patients, presence of only one functioning kidney

• Congestive heart failure (CHF) (NYHA (New York Heart Association) class CHF III-IV)

• Unstable angina within the past three months

• Stroke within the past six months

• Myocardial infarction or cardiac surgery within the past three months

• PTCA (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty) within the past three months

• History of angioedema

• Sustained ventricular tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter or otherclinically relevant cardiac arrhythmias as determined by the investigator

• Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, aortic stenosis, hemodynamically relevantstenosis of the aortic or mitral valve

• Administration of digoxin or other digitalis-type drugs

• Patients with insulin treated Type II diabetes mellitus whose diabetes has not beenstable and controlled for at least the past three months as defined by an HbA1C ≥ 10%

• Known drug or alcohol dependency within the past one year period

• Concomitant administration of medications known to affect blood pressure, exceptmedications allowed by the protocol

• Patients receiving any investigational therapy within one month of signing theinformed consent form. Patients who have participated in previous telmisartan studiesmay participate in this study provided there has been at least one month betweendiscontinuing the previous study and signing the consent for the present study

• Known hypersensitivity to any component of the formulations

• Any clinical condition which, in the opinion of the investigator, would not allow safecompletion of the protocol and safe administration of trial medication