ISLAMABAD (Pakistan Point News / Online - 17th July, 2019) High blood pressure increases the risk of heart attack, stroke, chronicheart failure, and kidney disease. According to some estimates, in 2015, more than 1 billion people were living with high blood pressure worldwide.Using national, subnational, or community population-based studies to analyze the worldwide trends in blood pressure from 1975 to 2015, researchers found that the number of people with high blood pressure has almost doubled over the past 40 years.
Treatments for high blood pressure include lifestyle changes and medications. The types of drug that doctors prescribe depend on blood pressure measurements and other medical problems that the person might have.The most common medications include inhibitors, which help relax blood vessels, and channel blockers, which prevent the action of a natural chemical that narrows blood vessels, thus slowing the heartbeat and reducing the amount of blood that needs pumping.
Now, scientists from Imperial College London, United Kingdom, have collaborated with researchers from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, to investigate the efficacy and potential side effects of three common blood pressure medications: ACE-inhibitors, beta-blockers, and calcium channel blockers.The results of the study appear in the journal Circulation.To conduct the study, the researchers used genetic analysis. They identified the proteins that these blood pressure drugs target and analyzed data from approximately 750,000 people to identify the genetic variants that code for these proteins.
