In a piece in the Huffington Post, Janet Bond Brill, Ph.D., lists foods that might help combat high blood pressure.
Brill describes high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, as a “silent killer” that’s reached epidemic proportions in the United States.
She writes that as many as 67 million American adults live with the condition. And high blood pressure is the largest risk factor for death by cardiovascular disease, which happens ...
continue reading...
Reports linking the blood pressure medication Benicar to intestinal problems were a hot topic of conversation at this year’s Digestive Disease Week meeting — considered the largest and most prestigious meeting in the world for the gastrointestinal professionals.
A report in Gastroenterology and Endoscopy News says Benicar has been linked to severe symptoms similar to those of sprue, or celiac disease.
That’s not the only concern that health care professionals have raised ...
continue reading...
An article in Forbes analyzes the likely impact of an opinion piece published in the medical journal JAMA Internal Medicine, which journalist Peter Lipson concludes is “sure to start some fights.”
In the JAMA column, retired but respected physician Iona Heath argues that mild high blood pressure is over-treated, and that medical professionals should raise the blood pressure rate at which they begin prescribing medication.
Not only might the blood ...
continue reading...
A story in The Oregonian deals with the controversial question of whether people with borderline high blood pressure are taking medicine unnecessarily.
The issue is getting a good deal of discussion in the medical community following a recent column in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, in which a British doctor called for raising the blood pressure levels at which medication is prescribed.
Among the doctor’s concerns is that prescribing medication too ...
continue reading...
The Wall Street Journal reports that Daiichi Sankyo Co., Japan’s third-largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, is hoping sales of new drugs will help the company offset lost revenue from patent expirations.
Although Daiichi Sankyo returned to profit in the fiscal fourth quarter and posted a six-fold jump in annual net profit, the story says, those gains were mainly due to the absence of a $3.9 billion one-time loss from settlement costs between its ...
continue reading...A senior regulator at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is trying to get the agency to issue stronger warnings about the class of blood pressure medications that includes Benicar, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The article says a 2010 study published in Lancet Oncology found that people taking angiotensin receptor blockers, or ARBs, had an 11 percent greater risk of new cancer overall and a 25 percent greater ...
continue reading...
