High blood pressure is linked to greater risk of developing diabetes

About 70 million American adults have high blood pressure, and an equal number have higher-than-normal but not full-blown hypertension.

“In hypertensive patients without diabetes, ingestion of the entire daily dose of one or more blood pressure-lowering medications at bedtime compared with ingestion of all such medications upon awakening results in significantly improved sleeping blood pressure control and prevention of new-onset diabetes”.

A new study confirms what health experts had long suspected: people with high blood pressure have a much greater chance of developing diabetes.

At least 4.6 million Australians have high blood pressure.

ANOUSHKA PATEL: We can’t say that it’s definitely caused by high blood pressure, the study design doesn’t allow us to make that conclusion. All had periodic blood tests and blood pressure monitoring.

“Our job is to provide research information to the larger scientific community and health professionals, so when you have a trial like this one that’s completed successfully, we feel we accomplished our mission”, he said.

ANOUSHKA PATEL: Yes I think that’s the important design feature of the study, so it excluded people at the beginning who already had diabetes – so it only included people without diabetes, without heart disease, looked at the heart pressure levels, then looked at people over a period of time and looked at whether to see if they developed diabetes.

CAVEATS Participants took a variety of blood pressure medications.

So, the take away from this research is that taking high blood pressure medication at bedtime rather than in the morning, may be beneficial.

A study published last week in the journal Diabetologia found that when people on high blood pressure medication took it at bedtime instead of in the morning, the risk of type II diabetes was reduced overall, by more than 60%.

Hypertension drugs – including ace inhibitors, diuretics, calcium channel blockers and beta blockers – especially for elderly patients can pose side effects including lightheadedness that boosts the risk of falling. Others might cause allergic reactions, while calcium channel blockers can cause ankles to swell, Dr. Conroy said. The findings of the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial, or SPRINT, were so definitive that it was stopped earlier than planned in order to share the results quickly.

“Understanding the link will help us better communicate risks to patients and can provide another motivation for patients and doctors to aim for tight blood pressure control”.