Most prescribed blood pressure drugs may be less effective than others ▫️A new multinational study shows that the most popular first-line treatment for hypertension is less effective and has more side effects than an alternative that's prescribed much less often. ▫️Current guidelines from the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association recommend starting antihypertensive therapy with any drug from five different classes of medications, including thiazide diuretics, ACE inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor blockers (ARBs), dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers, and non-dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers. ▫️They found that patients who were first prescribed thiazide diuretics had 15% fewer heart attacks, strokes, and hospitalizations for heart failure, compared to those who were prescribed ACE inhibitors. Patients who began with thiazides also experienced fewer side effects. - The researchers estimated that approximately 3,100 major cardiovascular events among the patients who first took ACE inhibitors could have been avoided had they first been treated with a thiazide diuretic. - The study - the most comprehensive to compare outcomes in newly treated patients with hypertension - was published in The Lancet. ▫️Yet patients who were first treated with thiazide diuretics had 15% fewer heart attacks, hospitalizations for heart failure, and strokes compared with those treated with other first-line therapies. In addition, patients first treated with ACE inhibitors had higher rates of 19 side effects compared with thiazide users.
