WEDNESDAY, Oct. 23, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Ingestion of prescribed blood pressure-lowering medications at bedtime is associated with a reduction in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, according to a study published online Oct. 22 in the European Heart Journal.
Ramón C. Hermida, Ph.D., from the University of Vigo in Spain, and colleagues conducted a multicenter prospective trial involving 19,084 patients with hypertension who were assigned to ingest the entire daily dose of hypertension medications at bedtime (9,552 patients) or upon awakening (9,532 patients).
The researchers found that 1,752 participants experienced the primary CVD outcome (CVD death, myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization, heart failure, or stroke) during the 6.3-year median patient follow-up. After adjustment for significant influential characteristics including age, sex, type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, smoking, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, asleep systolic blood pressure mean, sleep-time relative systolic blood pressure decline, and previous CVD event, patients of the bedtime treatment-time regimen had a lower hazard ratio of the primary CVD outcome (hazard ratio, 0.55) and each of its single components (0.44, 0.66, 0.60, 0.58, and 0.51, respectively) compared with upon-waking treatment time.
“The results of this study show that patients who routinely take their antihypertensive medication at bedtime, as opposed to when they wake up, have better-controlled blood pressure and, most importantly, a significantly decreased risk of death or illness from heart and blood vessel problems,” Hermida said in a statement.
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