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Blood Pressure Treatment

New Blood Pressure Treatment Guidelines are on the way.

Blood pressure treatment recommendations may be about to change as a result of a new large study called the ASCOT TRIAL.

The 'Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial' (ASCOT) compared two drugs in combination (amlodipine plus perindopril) with another two similar but slightly more old fashioned drugs (atenolol plus bendroflumethiazide).

The study has been stopped nearly five years early because high blood pressure patients taking the former combination were found to be much less likely to experience an MI or stroke than those on the latter treatment.

The study looked at 19000 blood pressure patients and started in 1997. Researchers from Imperial College in London said that precise figures on the effectiveness of this new combination would not be available until full results of the study have been analysed. They aim to publish a paper in a medical journal called The Lancet later in 2005.

The ASCOT study also originally looked at drugs for cholesterol treatment. This lipid lowering arm of the study (ASCOT-LLA) was also stopped prematurely in October 2002 after it showed that blood pressure patients benefited from taking atorvastatin whether or not they had high cholesterol.

Only time will tell how important these results are but it looks as if this study will trigger major changes in how we look at the choice of blood pressure and cholesterol treatments.

Dr Gordon Cameron is a doctor based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has a special interest in blood pressure treatment. You can discover how to lower high blood pressure and about the problems of low blood pressure treatment by visiting Dr Cameron's websites.

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