Update on the world *Major Health Problems

June 12, 2006

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Sunday, June 11, 2006 - Page updated at 12:00 a.m.

Quick Study Update on major health topics

By Linda Searing

Special to The Washington Post

HEART FAILURE

Success at staving off disease may vary with medication type.

THE QUESTION: High blood pressure often leads to heart failure, so treating

hypertension is considered a prime means of prevention. Does it matter what type

of blood-pressure drug is used?

THIS STUDY analyzed medical data on 33,357 people who had participated in a

study comparing antihypertensive drugs. Participants were at least 55 years old

and had hypertension and at least one other risk factor for heart disease, such

as being diabetic or a smoker. They had been randomly assigned to take a

diuretic (chlorthalidone), a calcium channel blocker (amlodipine) or an ACE

inhibitor (lisinopril). During a five-year period, 1,773 people were diagnosed

with heart failure. During the first year after treatment, people who took a

channel blocker or ACE inhibitor were more than twice as likely to have been

hospitalized for heart failure or to have died from it as were those who took a

diuretic. By the fifth year, those in the channel blocker group were 22 percent

more likely than the others to have had serious heart failure.

<<I thought the drugs were supposed to prevent the heart failure...looks like

the drug companies want to sell more drugs. Notice the studies were funded by

them>>

WHO MAY BE AFFECTED BY THESE FINDINGS? People with high blood pressure. An

estimated 90 percent of people with heart failure had high blood pressure first.

CAVEATS: To control their blood pressure, most participants were given

additional drugs as the study progressed; this may have affected the findings.

The study was funded by Pfizer, which also provided medications, as did

AstraZeneca and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Three of the 15 main authors had received

fees from the companies.

FIND THIS STUDY: May 9 issue of Circulation; abstract available online at

" To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to

make me everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being

can fight, and never stop fighting. " -e.e. cummings-

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