October 8, 2015 – Diabetes and Blood Pressure

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Anchor lead:  Can controlling high blood pressure reduce diabetes risk? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Certain types of blood pressure medicines taken at night seem to reduce the risk of developing diabetes, a recent study found.  Gregory Prokopowicz, a high blood pressure expert at Johns Hopkins, describes the intervention.

Prokopowicz: What they did specifically in this study is they randomly had their patients take all of their medications in the morning or at least one of the medications in the evening. And the group that took at least one of their medications in the evening had a significantly lower incidence of new diabetes, which is a fascinating finding. This effect was not true for all blood pressure medications.  It turns out that certain classes produced this effect and other classes did not so I don’t think it would be correct to conclude from this that we should immediately take everything in the evening.   :29

Prokopowicz says this study is yet one more indicating that timing of medications is an important aspect of their therapeutic value, and one that is being actively investigated for many types of medicines.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.