According to researchers the new types of blood pressure-lowering drugs are more effective in preventing strokes and heart attacks and save even more lives.
Patients with high blood pressure taking a relatively new type of cholesterol-lowering medication called a statin benefited from a 36% reduction in heart attacks and a 27% reduction in strokes compared to those not prescribed that specific medication.
Overall, the risk of death from strokes and heart attacks was reduced by 24% with the newer drugs compared with the older ones.
Hypertension is one of the most important preventable cause of premature death in developed countries, and the benefits of antihypertensive drugs is well established.
However, although previous studies have suggested that newer agents might have advantages over diuretics and Beta-blockers, to date no individual trial using those therapies has shown a significant reduction in coronary heart disease.
Now a new major trial by researchers, from the UK and Scandinavia, says their results will provide reassurance and guidance for doctors and patients alike.
In the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial (ASCOT), Bjorn Dahlof of Sahlgrenska University Hospital, in Sweden, and colleagues compared the effect of combinations of older drugs - atenolol and thiazide - with newer drugs, amlodipine and perindopril.
In the study the investigators recruited 19257 patients aged between 40–79 years who had a least three other risk factors for cardiovascular events, half were prescribed the atenololbased regimen and half the amlodipine-based regimen.
The researchers found after 5 years that those on the amlodipine-based regimen had lower blood pressure values than those on the atenolol -based regimen.
They also found that the newer drugs prevented more major cardiovascular events and caused fewer cases of diabetes than the older drugs.
These cholesterol-lowering findings were discovered back in 2002 - five years after the planned 10-year trial began in 1997, and the trial was stopped early because the results were so outstanding.