Bissap, the Senegalese name of Hibiscus sabdariffa (HS) is well-known for its effect on blood pressure [1,2] and kinkeliba” the health Tea” namely the Combretum micranthum (CM) plant has started being assessed with promising results. Since both are popular drinks in West Africa, we compared them in moderately hypertensive patients (systolic blood pressure 140 -179 mm Hg and/or diastolic 90-109 mm Hg) in tablet form of dried plants, with the traditional tea recipe. This was done in an equivalence 5-arm multi-centric randomized control trial, with captopril as the standard control and a 6-months follow-up. In this study, herbal drugs were constituted from flowers (calyx) of HS and leaves of CM, in the dried form for teas and as powder in tablets. The study protocol was submitted and accepted by the local ethical committee.
Results from one site of the study, Touba, are already available. With 85 included patients (a final follow-up for 72), 39% of patients in the plant products group had normalized their systolic pressure, and 80% their diastolic pressure versus 31% for systolic pressure, and 50% for diastolic pressure in the captopril group. Food products were well tolerated, with occasional epigastric pain for bissap. One patient (under captopril) was excluded at day 21 because of hypertensive crisis; 6 patients moved from single to combined (2 plant) treatment in order to achieve sufficient blood pressure control and 5 to captopril.
These preliminary results suggest that the tested traditional African food products may have an effectiveness similar to the standard captopril treatment for mild/moderate hypertension.
[1] Seck, S. M., Doupa, D., Dia, D. G., Diop, E. A., Ardiet, D.-L., Nogueira, R. C., Graz, B., Diouf, B., Journal of human hypertension 2017.
[2] McKay, D. L., Chen, C. Y., Saltzman, E., Blumberg, J. B., The Journal of nutrition 2010, 140, 298-303.