Category: hypertension

Drugs used to treat mild high blood pressure have not been found to reduce heart attacks, strokes, or deaths, Jeanne Lenzer reports in Slate. The study "turns medical dogma on its head," she writes, in what seems to me to be a very important story. Some 68 million Americans have mild high blood pressure, she reports. The problem could be something called disease creep, which "occurs when patients with risk factors for a condition or milder cases are treated the same as patients with severe cases." The story seems to have received only scattered coverage: A Google search turned up three stories. Not everyone agrees with the findings, but this study should not have been ignored. A nod to Lenzer for staying on top of this...