AS THE most common disease encountered by medical practitioners, hypertension continues to attract new therapies that promise greater efficacy and fewer adverse effects than currently available drugs. The most recently introduced new class of antihypertensive drugs, the angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs), is the fastest-growing group, having been prescribed in the United States more than 23 million times in 1999, only a few years after their introduction. With 6 ARBs now available, and more likely on the way, they are widely touted as a major advance, in part because of their tolerability.1,2