High Blood Pressure: Two types of drugs increase the risk of diabetes (and two lower it)

Beta blockers and diuretics – designed to lower blood pressure – increase the risk of diabetes, a major new study has found.  
Conversely, two other types of antihypertensives – the ACE inhibitor and the angiotensin-receptor blocker – reduce the risk.

It’s been suspected for nearly 50 years that antihypertensives cause diabetes because they lower a patient’s glucose tolerance levels, but a definitive statement has been hard to come by as many patients with raised blood pressure are more likely to develop diabetes in any event.

Researchers from Rush Medical College in Chicago re-examined 22 clinical trials that involved more than 143,000 patients who did not have diabetes when they started taking an antihypertensive.

(Source:  The Lancet, 2007; 369: 201-7).


E-news broadcast 1 February 2007 No.330 [Subscribe]