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Causality: well established
Causality assessment · Causality: well established
Clonidine and Blood pressure increased (rebound): is the FAERS signal real?
A written Bradford Hill assessment of one drug–event pair. The grade is a judgement about the signal, not a statement that this drug causes this event in any one person; FAERS counts are reports, not rates.
Clonidine ↔ Blood pressure increased (rebound)
n=1,733 co-reports · PRR 4.7 · ROR 4.8
Abrupt withdrawal of clonidine causes rebound hypertension with catecholamine surge, especially after high doses or concomitant beta-blockade; 1,733 co-reports give PRR 4.7. The label warns against abrupt discontinuation and advises tapering.
Regulatory basis: clonidine (Catapres) prescribing information — rebound hypertension on abrupt withdrawal; taper guidance.
| Bradford Hill viewpoint | Status | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Temporality (necessary) | met | Hours to days after stopping |
| Strength | met | PRR 4.7 with 1,733 co-reports |
| Consistency | met | Reproduced across reports |
| Specificity | not established | BP readings are non-specific |
| Biological gradient | met | Higher with higher doses |
| Plausibility | met | Known withdrawal catecholamine surge |
| Coherence | met | Fits clonidine's mechanism |
| Experiment | n/a | Withdrawal not studied in trials |
| Analogy | met | Analogous to beta-blocker withdrawal |
This table is this page's own qualitative read of the literature cited above, not an automated or citation-gated assessment — see the note at the bottom of this page.
✗ No ClinicalTrials.gov results-posting trial in the top search hits for clonidine captured blood pressure increased (rebound) as a tracked adverse event in a usable structure. Trials rarely study the withdrawal phase, so rebound hypertension is not captured as an on-treatment event.