Blood pressure medication improves Covid-19 survival rates

Blood pressure medication could improve Covid-19 survival rates and even reduce the severity of the infection, according to new research.

24 August 2020

© Andrew Brookes/Westend61/Cover Images

Researchers from the University of East Anglia in the U.K. studied 28,000 patients taking antihypertensives - a type of drug used to treat hypertension, or high blood pressure, and discovered that the risk of being critically ill or dying from Covid-19 was reduced for patients with high blood pressure who were taking Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) or Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARB).

Experts analysed 19 studies and compared the data from Covid-19 patients who were taking ACEi or ARB medications for blood pressure and those who were not.

They found that Covid-19 patients with high blood pressure who were on those tablets had a significantly lower risk of death and critical outcomes, such as being admitted to intensive care and/or being put on a ventilator, with them discovering that the medication-taking patients were 0.67 times less likely to have a critical or fatal outcome than those who didn't take tablets.

"We found that a third of Covid-19 patients with high blood pressure and a quarter of patients overall were taking an ACEi/ARBs. This is likely due to the increasing risk of infection in patients with co-morbidities such as cardiovascular diseases, hypertension and diabetes," said lead researcher Dr Vassilios Vassiliou. "But the really important thing that we showed was that there is no evidence that these medications might increase the severity of Covid-19 or risk of death.

"On the contrary, we found that there was a significantly lower risk of death and critical outcomes, so they might in fact have a protective role - particularly in patients with hypertension... Our research provides substantial evidence to recommend continued use of these medications if the patients were taking them already."

He noted that the study could not establish whether starting such tablets in Covid-19 patients would improve their prognosis.

https://www.msn.com/en-my/health/medical/blood-pressure-medication-improves-covid-19-survival-rates/ar-BB18jbUJ?ocid=ientp