Cheaper Blood Pressure Drugs: Good as New?

Aug. 13, 2010— -- Generic blood pressure drugs are just as good as newer, more expensive ones, according to new data out of the study known as the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT).

When researchers followed up with ALLHAT participants taking one of three classes of blood pressure drugs for an average of 8.8 years, they found that a generic diuretic (chlorthalidone) was just as effective at lowering blood pressure and preventing heart attack and stroke as a name-brand calcium channel blocker (Norvascor) or ACE inhibitor (Prinivil, Zestril).

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The only significant differences actually favored the diuretic, reported Dr. Paul Whelton of Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Ill., and colleagues. Heart failure hospitalization and fatalities remained lower at 8.8 years with the diuretic compared with the calcium channel blocker. And fatal strokes remained lower compared with the ACE inhibitor.

Whelton presented the results at the China Heart Congress and International Heart Forum in Beijing.Generic diuretics cost $25 to $40 per year compared with up to $300 to $600 annually for newer brand-name hypertension drugs, according to a press release from Loyola.

The ALLHAT investigators have consistently pointed to cost as yet another advantage of diuretics. Joint National Committee (JNC7) guidelines give preference to diuretics as a first-line agent after lifestyle measures, although international guidelines have tended to disagree.

But the message may simply be that the specific drug or method used might not matter, as long as it controls blood pressure," explained Dr. Stephen L. Kopecky of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

"It can be lifestyle, it can be exercise, it can be weight loss, it can be not smoking and drinking," he said in an interview. "What we're finding over and over again is it really is important getting your numbers under control no matter how you do it."

The ALLHAT trial was designed to compare the three classes primarily on occurrence of a composite endpoint of fatal coronary heart disease or nonfatal heart attack. The trial's initial five-year double-blind phase included 33,357 high-risk hypertensive patients ages 55 years or older randomized to treatment with one of the three drugs between 1994 and 2002.