17 million Britons might need to be given blood pressure pills

17 million Britons might need to be given blood pressure pills: Major Oxford study says mass prescribing of could slash stroke and cardiac arrest risk.

Professor Kazem Rahimi of Oxford University led the major new research and his team examined 123 previous studies involving 600,000 test subjects. He said the drugs should be treated like cholesterol-busting statins 

He claimed that up to 20 per cent of the population could be helped. 

Up to 17million Britons should be considered for blood pressure drugs to cut the risk of heart disease, experts said last night.

A major study led by Oxford University found that the mass prescribing of daily pills could significantly slash rates of strokes and heart attack.

Currently the cheap drugs are given only to those with high blood pressure. But the researchers said the rules should be changed to help protect those with normal blood pressure as well.

It would mean virtually everyone over the age of 40 potentially being offered the pills. The drugs would be treated in the same way as cholesterol-busting statins, which are offered to anyone with a 10 per cent chance of heart trouble within the next decade.

According to the author of the study, Professor Kazem Rahimi, this could save millions of lives. ‘Our findings clearly show that treating blood pressure to a lower level than currently recommended could greatly reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease and potentially save millions of lives if the treatment was widely implemented,’ he said.

‘We are saying that the same approach as is used for statins should be adopted for blood pressure drugs.

‘Whether the threshold is 10 per cent or 12 per cent would be up for discussion – mainly around what is affordable – but 10 per cent is a good place to start. Logically a 10 per cent threshold would make about 17million people in Britain eligible for consideration – but this is the starting point of the discussion, it could be 20 per cent.’

Under existing rules most people are treated only if they have blood pressure over a certain threshold – a reading of 140/90.

But Professor Rahimi says the treatment threshold should be cut by NICE, the NHS medicines watchdog, to 130/85 immediately – and ultimately be scrapped.

He wants patients to have individual health assessments on age, medical history and lifestyle instead, with the offer of blood pressure drugs if they have even a small chance of suffering heart disease or stroke.

And the cardiovascular expert suggested anyone considered to have a 10 per cent chance of heart trouble within a decade should be eligible – just as they are for statins. While statins tackle ‘bad cholesterol’ in the liver, blood pressure drugs mostly work by helping blood vessels expand.

Prof Rahimi's team examined 123 previous studies involving 600,000 people going back more than 50 years 

Professor Rahimi’s team at Oxford’s George Institute for Global Health, assisted by experts from the universities of Manchester, King’s College London and Sydney, conducted the largest ever review of the evidence on blood pressure drugs.

Their results were published in the Lancet medical journal.

They examined 123 previous studies, including more than 600,000 people, dating back 50 years.

And they found that treatment with any of the main classes of blood pressure drugs significantly reduced the risk of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, heart failure and early death. Overall, every 10-point reduction in blood pressure score reduced the risks of major cardiovascular disease by about a fifth.

At the same time, the risk of stroke and heart failure fell by about a quarter, and the risk of death from any cause dropped by 13 per cent. It is not clear how many people receive blood pressure drugs in the UK, but it is far lower than the 17million eligible if the Oxford team’s advice was accepted.

Health experts say that many patients – even those who already have high blood pressure – are slipping through the net untreated. Like statins, blood pressure drugs tend to be very cheap because their patents have usually expired and firms can produce them at low cost.

Ramipril, which is one of the most widely-used blood pressure drugs, costs just 4p a capsule and is taken once a day.

Experts last night welcomed the research and said that blood pressure rules must be updated to make the drugs more widely available.

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘Dividing blood pressure into either high or normal, as happens now, is illogical. Many people with high blood pressure are not being treated, and we have a massive hill to climb.

‘We really need to focus on those at high risk at the moment – it is frankly unrealistic to move on, at this stage, to those at lower risk.’

But he said NICE should adopt the approach suggested by the authors, although with a higher threshold than 10 per cent: ‘I would be very surprised if NICE does not take notice of this publication – its evidence is very strong.’

A spokesman for NICE said the body would be revisiting its guidance in June.

SOURCE: MAIL ONLINE