How Does HOPE-3 Change Thinking About Primary Prevention?

–The study lends strong support for statins but delivers a mixed message for antihypertensives. The widely reported results of HOPE-3 may bolster the case for primary prevention with statins and blood pressure drugs. But the trial also makes clear that the benefits, though real, are also modest, and may not be evenly distributed between statins…

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Should Body Weight Influence Choice of Antihypertensive Therapy?

The hypertension field has been troubled by repeated observations that normal weight patients have more cardiovascular (CV) events than obese patients. Now a new analysis of a large hypertension trial confirms this finding but also suggests that it may be explained by either an adverse effect of diuretics or a protective effect of calcium-channel blockers in non-obese…

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Hydrochlorothiazide and Nifedipine Linked To Increased Incidence Of Lip Cancer

The antihypertensive drugs hydrochlorothiazide and nifedipine have been linked to a significantly increased risk for lip cancer in a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The link is plausible, write the authors, since the drugs are known to be photosensitizing. Using a large cohort from the Kaiser Permanente system, researchers at Kaiser Permanente and Stanford…

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