A new study from the University of Bologna has found that a common blood pressure medicine called beta-blockers might increase the risk of heart failure in women more than in men. This has raised concerns about how these drugs affect women’s heart health.
The study looked at people who had high blood pressure but had never been diagnosed with heart disease. It was published in the medical journal Hypertension.
Beta-blockers are often given to people with high blood pressure to help protect the heart. They work by slowing the heart rate and lowering blood pressure.
But the researchers found that women taking beta-blockers were nearly 5% more likely to develop heart failure than men, especially after they had serious heart problems like a heart attack.
These serious heart problems, known as acute coronary syndromes, happen when the blood flow to the heart suddenly drops. This can lead to a heart attack, which may then lead to heart failure if the heart becomes too weak to pump blood properly.
To study this, researchers collected health data from nearly 14,000 adults in 12 countries in Europe. None of the people in the study had heart disease at the start, but all of them had high blood pressure. The researchers compared people who took beta-blockers with those who did not and looked at what happened if they later had a heart problem.
The results were troubling. Women taking beta-blockers were 4.6% more likely than men to be hospitalized for heart failure after a heart attack. And when people developed heart failure, their risk of dying was seven times higher than those who had a heart attack but did not develop heart failure.
Women who had a severe heart attack, called STEMI, were 6.1% more likely than men with the same condition to develop heart failure.
One key finding was that men and women who were not taking beta-blockers had similar risks of heart failure. This suggests that the beta-blockers may affect women differently than men. The researchers think this could be due to differences in how men and women respond to medication, but more research is needed to know for sure.
The study shows how important it is to manage high blood pressure through healthy habits like a good diet, regular exercise, and reducing stress—especially for women who do not already have heart disease. It also raises the idea that beta-blockers may interact with hormone treatments, but this was not studied in detail.
Doctors may need to think more carefully about which blood pressure medicine is best for each patient, especially for women. More research is needed, but these findings suggest that a personalized approach to treatment may be better.
Women who are currently taking beta-blockers for high blood pressure should not stop taking their medicine on their own. Instead, they should talk to their doctor about the best plan for their heart health.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that vitamin K helps cut heart disease risk by a third, and a year of exercise reversed worrisome heart failure.
For more health information, please see recent studies about supplements that could help prevent heart disease, stroke, and results showing this food ingredient may strongly increase heart disease death risk.
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