Treating Type 2 Diabetes ASAP Pays Off
Studies: Intensive Approach to Blood Sugar and Blood Pressure Pays Off for Decades
Blood Pressure: Keep It Down continued...
More than 1,100 participants were either assigned to take an ACE inhibitor or a beta-blocker to reach a certain blood pressure goal. For comparison, other patients with high blood pressure got an easier blood pressure goal and didn't have to take ACE inhibitors or beta-blockers.
When the study ended, the patients who took the intensive approach were less likely to have died from diabetes, had a stroke, or developed diabetes-related complications.
But two years later, when the patients could handle their blood pressure however they wanted to, it was a different story.
By then, blood pressure had crept up in the patients who had been in the intensive group, and dropped in the comparison group. That erased the benefit gaps between the groups; there was no "legacy effect."
The bottom line: Optimal blood pressure control is "of major importance... in patients with type 2 diabetes but must be maintained if these benefits are to be sustained," Holman and colleagues conclude.