News - Hypertension Week of Nov. 16, 2003/ Vol. 2 No. 46

Study: Women Receive More Aggressive Treatment for Hypertension

Women are more likely than men to receive aggressive treatment for hypertension but still have higher blood pressures, according to a study presented Nov. 12 at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association.

Lead researcher Dr. Kristin Newby, a cardiologist at Duke Clinical Research Institute, and her colleagues analyzed data from 2,091 women and 5,084 men. Of those, 63 percent of the women had hypertension, compared to 50 percent of the men.

Sixteen percent of the women were prescribed three different drugs to control hypertension, compared to 13 percent of the men. Almost 35 percent of women received two different drugs, compared to 30 percent of the men.

"While women were more likely to get multi-drug treatments, they still had higher blood pressures," Newby said, adding that systolic pressure was 150 mmHg in women and 147 mmHg in men. Even after treatment for the acute coronary syndrome, blood pressure remained higher in women at 126 mmHg versus 124 mmHg in men.

"It is not clear if women are not getting the right medicines, are getting them in the wrong doses, or if other factors are responsible for the need for more medications in women to attain similar control," added Newby.

After considering other factors that affect prescribing, the only anti-hypertensive drugs women received significantly more often than men were a class of drugs known as diuretics. Newby said she cannot explain why 32.7 percent of the women received a diuretic, compared to only 19.3 percent for men.

Newby said physicians need to be aggressive in treating hypertension, whether their patients are male or female. She added that awareness of the disease both on the part of physicians and patients is important to reducing the prevalence of hypertension thereby cutting the risk of heart attacks.

"Hypertension is often forgotten about, a silent disease," she said. "Awareness may be the key, since the disease itself does not make patients feel bad. A lack of awareness affects compliance with medications, going to the doctor for check-ups, eating healthful meals - all those things that are helpful in keeping hypertension in control."

Other sources: Johns Hopkins