High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, affects more than a billion people around the world.
It is a major health problem because it often has no symptoms but can lead to serious conditions like heart attacks, strokes, and kidney disease.
Despite being common, it is often poorly managed. Less than one in five people with high blood pressure have it under control.
Doctors usually treat high blood pressure with medications. There are many different kinds of blood pressure medicines, and most people need more than one to get their blood pressure to a safe level.
However, with so many options and combinations, it can be hard for doctors to know which drugs to choose and how much they will help. Now, a new tool might make this job easier.
Researchers from The George Institute for Global Health have built a special calculator that shows how well different blood pressure drugs work. They used information from nearly 500 studies involving more than 100,000 people to create this calculator.
It lets doctors see how much a drug—or a mix of drugs—is likely to lower a patient’s blood pressure. This tool is the first of its kind, and the research was recently published in the journal *The Lancet*.
The lead researcher, Dr. Nelson Wang, said this tool is very important. Even a small drop in blood pressure can make a big difference. For example, lowering the top number of your blood pressure (called systolic pressure) by just 1 mmHg can reduce your risk of heart attack or stroke by 2%.
But the problem is that blood pressure numbers can change a lot during the day and are often affected by how they are measured. This makes it hard for doctors to tell if a medicine is really working.
A single blood pressure medicine usually lowers systolic pressure by about 8 to 9 mmHg. But many people need a bigger drop—15 to 30 mmHg—to reach a safe level.
Doctors often start with one drug and slowly increase or change the treatment based on follow-up readings. But because blood pressure readings are not always accurate or stable, this slow method can take too long or lead to wrong decisions.
This new calculator could change that. Instead of relying only on blood pressure numbers that change all the time, doctors can use this calculator to choose a medicine—or combination of medicines—that is known to lower blood pressure by a certain amount based on large studies.
They can then start treatment with more confidence that it will work. The calculator groups drugs into low, medium, and high strength depending on how much they lower blood pressure. This is similar to how doctors already use tools to choose cholesterol drugs.
Professor Anthony Rodgers, another researcher on the team, explained that high blood pressure is one of the most common reasons people visit their doctor.
But until now, there was no clear resource that showed how different drugs worked, especially in combinations or at different doses. He believes this tool can help doctors treat high blood pressure more quickly and more effectively.
The next step is to test this new approach in real clinics. In future studies, doctors will use the calculator to decide on treatments and check how well patients respond.
In summary, the new blood pressure calculator is a helpful tool for doctors. It uses strong scientific evidence from many past studies to show how well each medicine works.
Instead of guessing or waiting for blood pressure readings to change, doctors can now choose better treatments faster. This could help millions of people get their blood pressure under control and avoid serious health problems.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
