The lowering of blood pressure -- known to prevent complications of type 2 diabetes such as heart disease -- can also help stop diabetes from getting started in the first place, results of a new study show.
“This study suggests that blood pressure lowering can help prevent diabetes in addition to its well-established beneficial effects in reducing cardiovascular events,” write Milad Nazarzadeh and colleagues in“In particular, ACE inhibitors and ARBs should become the drugs of choice when clinical risk of diabetes is of concern, whereas beta blockers and thiazide diuretics should be avoided where possible,” note Nazarzadeh, of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and co-authors.
In an editorial published alongside this study, Matthew A. Cavender, MD, MPH, and Robert C. Wirka, MD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, agree that the new findings -- along with the bulk of previous evidence-- point to an important role of different drugs in diabetes prevention. They note that, while “the absolute risk reduction found in this [study] is modest, interventions with small benefits can have an outsized effect when applied to conditions as common asNazarzadeh and colleagues say that because it’s not clear if lowering blood pressure causes the lower risk of diabetes, treatment guideline recommendations have been lacking.