Time is of the essence indeed. Merely juggling the timing of blood pressure medications can help patients with kidney disease avoid life-threatening complications, Italian researchers report.

Switching the dose of one blood pressure drug from morning to night helped restore normal nighttime blood pressure patterns in patients with abnormal patterns at night, they said.

In most people, blood pressure normally drops by at least 10% at night, usually between midnight and 3 a.m. The researchers noted that patients with chronic kidney disease who do not experience this normal nocturnal dip have been shown to be at increased risk for kidney failure, heart attack, and stroke, according to the researchers.

With this in mind, researchers from the Second University of Naples tweaked the timing of blood pressure drug delivery to see if they could change nighttime blood pressure patterns.

The study was small, involving just 32 patients with chronic kidney disease taking more than one blood pressure medication. All of the patients underwent ambulatory 24-hour blood pressure monitoring, and all were confirmed to be nighttime "non-dippers."

When the patients switched just one of their blood pressure drugs from morning to bedtime, 28 experienced normalization of nighttime blood pressure patterns within eight weeks.

Most patients also showed decreases in protein levels in their urine indicative of better kidney function.

The findings appear in the latest issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.