Calcium Channel Blockers Less Effective than Diuretics

An meta-analysis of nine studies involving more than 27,000 patients has revealed that calcium channel blockers are less effective than other, less-costly drugs in preventing complications of high blood pressure such as congestive heart failure and heart attacks. The other drugs used by patients in the analysis included diuretics, beta blockers, and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors. The meta-analysis was conducted by a team of researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine (Winston-Salem, NC, USA), the University of Washington (Seattle, USA), and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York, NY, USA) and reported at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology in Amsterdam.

Although calcium channel blockers do not harm patients, they are less effective and therefore the users do not enjoy the protection against heart attacks and heart failure that they would receive from other antihypertensive drugs. The researchers found that patients treated with calcium channel blockers had a 27% higher risk of heart attack and a 26% higher risk of heart failure than other patients. They found no difference, however, in the number of deaths from all causes or the risk of stroke. All drugs, including the calcium channel blockers, lowered blood pressure by the same amount. These results show that preventing heart attacks is more complicated than simply lowering blood pressure to a normal level.

According to the team's leader, Dr. Curt D. Furberg of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, calcium channel blockers cost 12-15 times the cost of a diuretic drug. Dr. Furberg says low-dose diuretics should be considered standard therapy for hypertension and all new classes of drugs should be compared to them.