Can 50 Million Blood Pressure Prescriptions Each Year Be Wrong?

–For decades physicians may have been prescribing the wrong diuretic. Now an innovative new trial will settle the question. A radically innovative large new VA trial will finally shed light on a decades-old unresolved question that could have important public health implications. According to guidelines thiazide diuretics are the first-line treatment for hypertension. Hydrochlorothiazide accounts…

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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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