(Associated Press) — It’s hard to predict which pills will best lower which patient’s high blood pressure, but researchers are hunting ways to better personalize therapy — perhaps even using a blood test.
The work is controversial, challenging today’s usual approach to treating the hypertension that plagues nearly one in three U.S. adults.
Now a trio of studies shows some drug combinations work better for certain populations — and raises the possibility that measuring blood levels of a hormone involved in hypertension might help optimize some people’s care.
The big surprise: Taking a drug that’s a poor match to that hormone level may not just fail to work, it sometimes can trigger a jump in blood pressure.
“The idea that one size fits all doesn’t make a lot of sense,” says Dr. Michael Alderman of New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who supports the blood test approach.
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This ought to be a wake-up call for hospital systems that sign contracts with particular pharma companies to dispense their drugs exclusively. The wrong medication can cause a jump in BP and bring with all kinds of problems including strokes. When are we going to decide that medicine is for human health not just for profits?
The first paragraph in the above article says it all:
The treatment of hypertension is based on the ‘trial and error’ method.
In no other industry where the life of humans is at stake is this acceptable. In fact, an engineer would get the sack if he would recommend to construct a bridge or a house based on the ‘trial and error’ method.
That the work is regarded as ‘controversial’ confirms what Jeremy Thumbprint suggests; patient care is secondary to profits. It is cheaper to treat patients with the ‘trial and error’ method than to actually find out what causes ‘essential hypertension’ in the first place.
Personally I even challenge the measuring of BP by traditional methods. The pressure at the heart may be less due to the sound being transported through a long ‘tube’ until it can be heard by the physician. This may mean that many patients, especially those with borderline, or pre-hypertension, may be unnecessarily treated with potentially dangerous drugs.
Personally I know that when I was on BP lowering drugs that my heart recovery rate after exercise dropped from about 27 beats per minute to about 15 beats per minute after one year, confirming that the elasticity of my blood vessels had become worse.
Being ‘borderline’ I decided to gradually discontinue the treatment, had a good hard look at my diet and changed to an almost vegan diet. I am still ‘borderline’, i.e. my BP has not changed over the last 15 years, my heart recovery rate is again between 22 and 26 beats per minute after exercise, in contrast to some acquaintances whose BB rose over this time-frame, despite treatment with medication.
Currently, medication does not treat hypertension, it merely suppresses it, hence the need for more medication after a few years of treatment.