Blood pressure drugs linked with cancer

Several classes of drugs including diuretics and antihypertensives (for lowering of blood pressure) are suspected as being possible causes of cancer of the kidney.

A new study has reexamined a number of possible causes, including seven studies that linked various cancers to high blood pressure. The usual suspects of diuretics and antihypertensives were also rounded up, but the researchers concluded that more research is needed.

The possible link between hypertension and cancer was first mooted in 1975, but it has never been confirmed. Diuretics were suspected as being a cause of renal (kidney) cancer in 1992, but larger trials have not confirmed this.

Another suspect has been the beta blocker atenolol when it was noted that cancer was twice as common in hypertensive sufferers taking the therapy. Antihypertensive drugs have also been pinpointed as a possible cause of renal cancer in several studies.

!AHypertension, 1996; 28: 321-4.