New research has shown that the most effective treatment for high blood pressure can depend on a person’s ethnicity.
The results come from the AIM-HY INFORM trial, the first study of its kind in the U.K., and were presented at the ESC Congress 2025 in Madrid.
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is one of the biggest risk factors for serious health problems such as heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, dementia, and early death.
It affects one in three adults worldwide and often goes unnoticed because it rarely causes symptoms.
The condition, however, can be controlled with healthy lifestyle changes, regular monitoring, and the right medication.
The AIM-HY INFORM trial, led by researchers at King’s College London, tested 829 participants from Black, South Asian, and white backgrounds.
Each person received different blood pressure treatments so that researchers could directly compare how they responded to various medications.
The findings revealed clear differences in how effective drugs were across the groups, both for single medications and for combinations of two drugs.
One of the most important discoveries was that Black patients often had lower levels of plasma renin, a substance linked to blood pressure control.
This biological difference helps explain why some blood pressure medicines work better in certain groups than in others. These insights give stronger scientific backing to the idea that ethnicity can influence how the body responds to treatment.
Professor Philip Chowienczyk, lead investigator of the AIM-HY program at King’s, explained that the results could help doctors tailor treatments more effectively.
“The AIM-HY trial will help us give everybody in the U.K. the best treatment for hypertension by tailoring treatment according to ethnicity.
The next challenge is to use biological markers to predict the best treatments and to develop drugs that are equally effective in all ethnic groups.”
The trial’s results are especially important for the more than seven million people of Black and South Asian heritage in the U.K., of whom at least two million currently require treatment for high blood pressure.
More targeted therapies could not only improve patient outcomes but also reduce healthcare costs by avoiding less effective treatments.
Professor Ian Wilkinson, chief investigator of the trial and president of the British & Irish Hypertension Society, said the findings support current guidance that already considers ethnicity when prescribing a first treatment.
However, he added that the results also show that a highly effective two-drug diuretic combination is not currently recommended, even though it worked well across all groups.
He urged health authorities to review their guidelines to reflect these new findings.
