Blood pressure becomes a serious problem for many people as they grow older.  This article from the BBC news Health News site explains that people over 55 should be taking blood pressure medication and can also use natural cures for high blood pressure to reduce the risk of stroke and heart attacks.  Read the article further to find out more about this health condition.

“Everyone aged 55 and over should be taking drugs to lower their blood pressure, a London-based expert says. Epidemiology expert Professor Malcolm Law said blood pressure drugs cut the risk of heart attack and stroke even for those with normal blood pressure.

His conclusion, published in the British Medical Journal and backed by other experts, is based on a review of 147 studies, involving 464,000 people. However, the Stroke Association warned the drugs could have side-effects.

The research found most types of blood pressure drugs cut the risk of heart attacks and heart failure by around a quarter and the risk of stroke by about a third.

The studies looked at the effect on two blood pressure measurements; systolic – the pressure when the heart beats while pumping blood – and diastolic – the pressure when the heart is at rest between beats.

The lowered risk estimates were based on lowering systolic blood pressure by 10mm Hg or diastolic blood pressure by 5mm Hg.

Widespread benefit

Professor Law, an expert in epidemiology at the Wolfson Institute at Barts and The London School of Medicine, said: “Beyond a certain age, we’re saying everyone would benefit from taking drugs that lower blood pressure.

“Beyond a certain age, we all have high blood pressure and we would all benefit from lowering it.

“What we call ‘normal’ blood pressure is actually high, and what we call high blood pressure is actually higher.”

Professor Law said the universal use of blood pressure drugs should be seen as analogous to vaccinating the entire population in the event of a flu pandemic.

There was no case for trying to assess who was a top priority, he said, when everybody was potentially at risk.
In fact, Professor Law said giving everybody blood pressure drugs would minimise the risk that people would be alarmed when told they needed to take the medication.”

To read the rest of the story on the BBC news, click here.

We have all heard how taking aspirin can help guard one against heart attack.  Now Canadian research may suggest that men benefit more.  Read the following research brought to you in the BBC news site:

“The heart-protecting benefits of aspirin may be available mainly to men, Canadian experts have suggested.

Some research studies have suggested that the drug might cut heart attack risk by half.

But an analysis of trials involving 113,000 patients hinted those with a higher number of female participants were less likely to show benefit.

However, the BMC Medicine study was described as “potentially misleading” by one UK researcher.

Heart attacks happen when a narrowed or damaged blood vessel feeding the heart is blocked by a blood clot.

Aspirin can make it harder for these clots to form and studies suggesting this could prevent attacks, or make them less likely, have led to thousands of people worldwide taking the drug every day.

However, the precise benefit has been hard to gauge, with some research coming to the conclusion that it was unlikely to offer any protection whatsoever.

Physical differences

The researchers from the James Hogg iCapture Centre for Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Research, part of the University of British Columbia, believe that gender may be one of the main reasons for this.

They say that the make-up of a woman’s heart and its surrounding blood vessels may be more resistant to the effects of aspirin.

They looked at the ratio of men and women taking part in major aspirin research projects – and found that those involving predominantly men were the most likely to find a benefit.

Conversely, those involving mainly women were more likely to find a lesser benefit, or none at all.

Dr Don Sin, one of the study authors, said: “We found that a lot of the variability in these trials seems to be due to the gender ratios, supporting the theory that women may be less responsive to aspirin than men for heart protection.

“From our findings we would caution clinicians on the prescribing of aspirin to women, especially for primary prevention of heart attacks.

“Whether or not other pharmaceutical products would be more effective for women is unclear; more sex-specific studies should now be conducted.”

This is unlikely to be the last word on who should be taking aspirin – a study of 80,000 women published in March 2007 claimed to have found heart benefits for healthy women who regularly took aspirin.

Long-term aspirin use does raise the risk of internal bleeding and some doctors are reluctant to recommend it for people who have not already suffered a heart attack for this reason.

One UK expert, Dr Colin Baigent, from the Clinical Trial
Service Unit at Oxford University, said that taking aspirin in the months and years after a heart attack delivered equal benefits to men and women.

He said: “This is potentially misleading – by far the largest trial included in this research was concerned mainly with the primary prevention of heart attacks – giving aspirin to people who had never had a heart attack.

“It would be a tragedy if women who are taking it because they had already had a heart attack stop doing so.”

News Source:  BBC NEWS

GPs are writing prescriptions for the latest, most expensive antibiotics – ignoring cheaper and better options, say
researchers. The British Pharmaceutical Conference heard one in eight prescriptions in one area were for more modern drugs, often breaching guidelines.  Experts say these drugs should be held back as a “last line of defence” – to cut the risk of bacterial resistance.

Doctors’ leaders said there might be good reasons for GPs’ choices.  Doctors in both hospitals and GP surgeries are under great pressure to curb their antibiotic use, as over-use can lead to the development of “superbugs” resistant to all but a few modern drugs.

In recent years, new classes of powerful antibiotics have been developed to counter this threat, and guidelines say these should be used sparingly and only on certain conditions and where earlier antibiotics have failed.

Four out of five prescriptions for antibiotics are written in the GP surgery, and a team from Liverpool John Moores University wanted to check what they were using and how often.  They looked at computer records and found that 15% of all antibiotic prescriptions were for more modern, expensive drugs, and that guidelines designed to restrict their use were not being followed.

The problem with guidelines is that none of them perfectly fits every situation Dr Jim Kennedy, RCGP.  “The risks associated with this behaviour are that the drug may be unnecessary or inappropriate, increasing the potential of
resistance and increasing costs to the primary care trust.”

Dr Jim Kennedy, the Royal College of GPs Head of Prescribing, said that a more detailed picture of prescribing would be needed to identify a problem.  “We don’t know if this is a couple of rogue prescribers, or whether there were good reasons why the guidelines weren’t being followed.  “The problem with guidelines is that none of them perfectly fits every situation.”

He said that it was possible that the overall downward trend in antibiotic prescribing in recent years might mean that the appropriate use of stronger, modern antibiotics appeared to increase, as GPs continued to use these appropriately in the treatment of more serious bacterial infections.  Hospital overdose Another study presented to the conference in Manchester highlighted the difficulties faced by those trying to curb overuse of antibiotics – this time within hospitals.

We think that doctors are still being overcautious about the risk of hospital acquired infections Dr Rachel Etherington, Sunderland University RCGP Many patients undergoing surgery are given a handful of doses of antibiotics to cut their chances of developing an infection, but Sunderland University researchers found in 2005 that more than half were getting too many in nearby City Hospitals Sunderland.

One woman patient was reportedly given 81 doses of antibiotics rather than the three to five required.  The trust changed its electronic prescribing system so that doctors would have to write in a date past which no antibiotics would be given.  However, the conference was told that the result was that 74% of patients received too much antibiotic, rather than 55% before the change, as doctors allowed for too many days of treatment.

Lead researcher Dr Rachel Etherington: “We think that doctors are still being overcautious about the risk of hospital acquired infections – perhaps partly due to media coverage of ‘superbugs’.”

News Source:  BBC News