{"id":605396,"date":"2024-06-04T01:41:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T05:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/the-time-you-take-blood-pressure-drugs-may-lower-heart-attack-risk\/"},"modified":"2024-06-04T06:15:55","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T10:15:55","slug":"the-time-you-take-blood-pressure-drugs-may-lower-heart-attack-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/the-time-you-take-blood-pressure-drugs-may-lower-heart-attack-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"The Time You Take Blood Pressure Drugs May Lower Heart Attack Risk","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

The Time You Take Blood Pressure Drugs May Lower Heart Attack Risk<\/a><\/h3>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPosted on June 4, 2024<\/a><\/span> Updated on June 2, 2024<\/a><\/span>\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/p>\n

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Taking blood pressure medication at a time that aligns with your personal chronotype<\/a> \u2013 the way your body\u2019s circadian rhythm affects when you go to sleep and get up \u2013 could help to protect the heart against the risk of heart attack, a new study shows.<\/p>\n

Put another way, it may be beneficial for night owls to take their medication in the evening, and for early birds to take it in the morning. These timings seem to offer some protection against the risks associated with blood pressure<\/a> (also known as hypertension).<\/p>\n

The international team of researchers behind the new study looked at records for more than 5,300 individuals, who answered questions about their chronotype, before being randomly split into groups and instructed to take their blood pressure meds at different times. Participants were then monitored over several months.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese results are exciting because they could represent a paradigm shift in the treatment of hypertension,\u201d says<\/a> Filippo Pigazzani, a cardiologist at the University of Dundee in the UK, who co-led the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research has now shown for the first time that considering chronotype when deciding [the] dosing time of antihypertensives \u2013 [a strategy called] personalized chronotherapy \u2013 could reduce the risk of heart attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each person\u2019s circadian rhythm<\/a> (24-hour biological cycle) varies slightly, based on genetics and other factors. These rhythms are well known for influencing our sleep patterns, but they also help to dictate body temperature, hormones, metabolism \u2013 and, importantly for this study, blood pressure levels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If blood pressure cycles up and down throughout the day, the time that medications are taken might matter, the researchers hypothesized. It\u2019s an idea that\u2019s been explored before<\/a>, but the results haven\u2019t led to any clear conclusions.<\/p>\n

In this study, the team wanted to identify the chronotypes of the participants before looking at heart health because chronotypes have previously been shown<\/a> to affect the risk of anxiety and type 2 diabetes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The results showed that taking medications at times \u2018misaligned\u2019 to chronotypes increased the risk of suffering a heart attack \u2013 particularly for those night owls who are usually most active at night, and took their medication in the morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important for physicians to remember that not all patients are the same,\u201d says<\/a> circadian biologist and co-lead author Kenneth Dyar, from Helmholtz Munich in Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumans show wide inter-individual differences in their chronotype, and these personal differences are known to affect disease risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the data here isn\u2019t comprehensive enough to definitively say that blood pressure medication timings affect the drugs\u2019 effectiveness, there\u2019s enough evidence that the researchers are interested in running more thorough studies to see what the relationship is.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore any patients change when they are taking their antihypertensive medications, our findings first need to be confirmed in new randomized clinical trials<\/a> of personalized chronotherapy,\u201d says<\/a> Pigazzani.<\/p>\n

The research has been published in eClinicalMedicine<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source : 1<\/a><\/p>\n