Replies from the authors

I)Answers to the Editor

Comments raised by the Editor on the abstract / Reply from the authors
  1. "Objectives" should be "Introduction"
/ Change has been made
  1. Section "aim" is missing and should be added
/ Section “Aim” added in the abstract (see below)
  1. Each main section should start on a new page
/ Done
  1. On page 4, title "Patients and methods" should be "Methods"
/ Change has been made

(2) New section “Aim”: “to assess the tolerability and effectiveness of barnidipine in mild to moderate hypertension patients switching treatment from other calcium channel blockers in daily practice”.

II)Answers to the Reviewer

Comments raised by the Reviewer / Reply from the authors
  1. Use the term of "effectiveness" rather than "efficacy"
/ Whenever related to the present study the change has been made in whole document
  1. Reference to the favorable effectiveness and tolerability profile of the proposed antihypertensive strategy should be added in the title.
/ The title has been adapted. see below (2)
  1. In the section Methods, there is no mention to which blood pressure targets have been used. Probably <140/90 mmHg? Have these blood targets applied to the whole population sample or different targets have been applied for patient subgroups with different cardiovascular risk profile?
/ A new sentence has been added on page 4, line 26. See below (3)
  1. Do you have data on BP reductions in diabetic patients and in other subgroups of hypertensive patients?
/ We didn’t perform and do not plan to perform subgroup analysis in diabetic patients or other subgroups.
  1. On page 2, line 35, "as" should be "with"
/ This is corrected
  1. On page 3, line 46, this observational study was designed to test the efficacy and tolerability.
/ Wording has been adapted accordingly
  1. On table 1, meaning of the second and third column (i.e. those labelled as "N" and "%"). Please clarify.
/ Table 1 has been simplified and made more explicite

(2) Revised title: “Replacement of amlodipine and lercanidipine by barnidipine: tolerability and effectiveness in a real-life study”. We discarded ‘favorable’. We feel that including ‘favorable’ in the title may be too strongly worded for the results, since this is no head-2-head comparison study.

(3) New sentence in Methods: “Blood pressure targets were as recommended in the ESH/ESC 2003 guidelines [1]. The blood pressure targets applied to the whole study population, irrespective of cardiovascular risk, except for diabetic patients (systolic blood pressure (SBP): non-diabetic <140 mmHg, diabetic <130 mmHg; diastolic blood pressure (DBP): non-diabetic <90 mmHg, diabetic <80 mmHg) [1,24]”. NB: to avoid repetitions, page 5, lines 6 & 7 have been adapted with use of abbreviations only (SBP, DBP).