 Exclusion criteria were patients with blood pressure 14090 mm Hg without antihypertensive medication, pregnant women or nursing mothers, patients with secondary hypertension, white-coat hypertension with systolic pressure 140 mm Hg andor diastolic pressure 90 mm Hg at the doctors office and awake mean systolic pressure 135 mm Hg or awake mean diastolic pressure 85 mm Hg without antihypertensive medication, malignant hypertension, presence of liver dysfunction evidenced by the patients clinical history or by one of the liver function tests with levels twice the normal values alkaline phosphatase, total bilirubin, aspartate aminotransferase, patients with clinical conditions that might interfere with the total conformity with the study or those who might have increased risk for participating in the study, patients with previous history of hypersensitivity reaction to the study medications, patients with a history of alcoholism, drug abuse or mental disorders that might invalidate the free and informed consent or limit the patients ability to meet the protocol rules, patients who had participated in any other studies involving investigational drugs or drugs already marketed within the previous month, before enrollment in this study or concomitantly with this study. 