Do you know what high blood pressure is? It’s a health problem where the force of blood against your blood vessels is too high.
This can cause a lot of issues, like heart attacks or strokes. A doctor named Nelson Wang and his team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, found a new way to lower blood pressure.
They published their findings in a journal called JAMA Cardiology on April 26.
Dr. Wang and his team wanted to see if using a mix of three or four blood pressure medicines, called “low-dose combination” (LDC) medicines, worked better than using just one.
They collected and studied lots of experiments done by other people.
These experiments compared using LDC medicines to using one medicine, the normal treatment, or a fake medicine called a placebo.
In total, they studied seven different trials involving 1,918 patients. Four of these trials used a mix of three medicines, and three used a mix of four.
The team discovered something really exciting. Patients who took LDC medicines had a bigger drop in their blood pressure than those who took one medicine, normal treatment, or placebo.
This happened between four and twelve weeks after starting the medicines.
More people who took LDC medicines reached a healthy blood pressure level (less than 140/90 mm Hg) compared to those who took one medicine or the placebo.
From all the people taking LDC medicines, 66 out of 100 reached the healthy level, while only 46 out of 100 reached it when taking one medicine or normal treatment. And with the placebo, only 18 out of 100 got to the healthy level.
In two trials that went on for six to twelve months, LDC medicines still worked better than one medicine or normal treatment.
Some patients felt dizziness with LDC medicines, but they didn’t have any other bad effects or stop the treatment.
Dr. Wang and his team think that LDC medicines could be a great step forward in treating high blood pressure. They can help 70 out of 100 people reach a healthy blood pressure level.
But the team wants to do even better than that. They want to find a way to increase these results without making the patients feel bad. They’re planning more research to find out how to do this.
One thing you should know is that some of the scientists involved in this study have money connections to companies that make medicines.
Some also have patent applications, which means they might make money from this idea in the future.
This is pretty common in this kind of research. It doesn’t mean the research is bad, but it’s good to keep in mind when reading about it.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies that black licorice could cause dangerous high blood pressure, and plant pigment can strongly reduce blood pressure.
For more information about blood pressure, please see recent studies about how to treat slightly high blood pressure, and results showing this common painkiller could strongly raise your blood pressure.
The study was published in JAMA Cardiology.
Copyright © 2023 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
