Sudden cardiac arrest is a serious and life-threatening event where the heart suddenly stops beating properly.
When this happens, blood can no longer flow to the brain and other parts of the body. The person quickly becomes unconscious and stops breathing. Without immediate treatment, sudden cardiac arrest can be fatal.
In Europe, sudden cardiac arrest causes about half of all heart-related deaths and one in five natural deaths. That makes it a major public health problem.
While some people may notice warning signs such as chest pain, shortness of breath, or nausea before a cardiac arrest, it often happens without any warning at all. This unpredictability makes it hard to prevent.
A new study by the European Sudden Cardiac Arrest network has raised concerns about a commonly used blood pressure drug called nifedipine. The research suggests that taking high doses of this drug may increase the risk of sudden cardiac arrest.
Nifedipine is used to treat high blood pressure, which is like having too much pressure in your pipes. By lowering that pressure, the drug helps prevent strokes and heart attacks. The study also looked at a similar drug called amlodipine, which works in much the same way.
To explore whether there was a connection between these drugs and sudden cardiac arrest, the researchers studied two groups of people. The first group included 2,503 patients who had suffered cardiac arrest. These were compared to 10,543 healthy people from a Dutch health registry.
The results were surprising. People who took a high dose of nifedipine—60 milligrams per day—had a higher chance of experiencing sudden cardiac arrest. This risk was not seen in people who took amlodipine.
To make sure the results were accurate, the researchers looked at a second group of people from Denmark. This group included 8,101 cardiac arrest patients and 40,505 healthy individuals. Again, the researchers found that high doses of nifedipine were linked to a higher risk of cardiac arrest.
This finding is concerning because both nifedipine and amlodipine have been used safely by millions of people for many years. Previous studies did not find this risk, likely because sudden cardiac arrest is difficult to study—it happens very fast and is hard to predict.
The researchers say that more studies are needed to confirm these results. They also want to find out exactly how nifedipine might be linked to cardiac arrest. Until then, they suggest that doctors and patients be careful with high doses of nifedipine.
This discovery is a powerful reminder that even medications we’ve used for a long time can have risks that we didn’t know about. It shows how important it is to keep doing research on medications to make sure they are safe.
Patients who are currently taking nifedipine should not stop their medication without speaking to their doctor. Instead, they should have a conversation with their healthcare provider to make sure their treatment plan is safe and up to date.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies that widely used blood pressure drug may increase eye disease risk and common blood pressure drugs linked to cognitive decline.
For more about blood pressure, please read studies about why checking blood pressure while lying down is very important and lowering top blood pressure number to less than 120 mm Hg effectively prevents heart disease.
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