Blood pressure medicine improves the survival rates of Covid-19 in people with hypertension, according to research that contradicts earlier fears that the pills may make the disease worse.
The risk of critical illness or death of Covid for people with high blood pressure was found to be significantly lower when they took angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEi) or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs).
Researchers from Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia (UEA) saw the effect of taking the common medication on coronavirus patients with a range of conditions.
Those with high blood pressure – a group known to be at greater risk of the disease – who took the drugs were 0.67 times less likely to have a critical or fatal outcome than those who were not, the study concluded .
For people taking the same medications for other conditions, including heart and kidney failure, diabetes and stroke, their Covid-19 outcome was even worse or better.
“As the world presents itself with a potential second wave of infection, it is especially important that we understand the impact these drugs have on Covid-19 patients,” said lead researcher Dr. Vassilios Vassiliou. “Our research provides substantial evidence to recommend continued use of these medications if the patients have already taken them.”
The finding added to rapidly growing medical expertise in treating the disease, eight months after the declaration of a pandemic. Last month, a trial of a therapy in which a protein was inhaled directly into the lungs of coronavirus patients found that it increased the chance of becoming seriously ill – as it requires ventilation – by 79%.
High blood pressure, which affects one in four adults in the UK, seems to reduce a person’s chances of surviving Covid-19. A study last month found that it was the most common condition found in patients admitted to the hospital with the disease, followed by a history of waterfalls, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and asthma.
The UEA study was prompted by research from hospitals in Wuhan and other Chinese cities at the beginning of the pandemic, which suggested that specific medications for high blood pressure could be linked to worse outcomes for Covid-19 patients.
There were concerns that the drugs could facilitate the entry of the coronavirus into cells, and it helped to take in lung tissue. This caused many patients to stop using it unilaterally.
UEA collaborated with Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital to analyze 19 studies involving a total of almost 29,000 patients.
“The really important thing we showed was that there is no evidence that these medications can increase the severity of Covid-19 as a risk of death,” Vassiliou said. “On the contrary, we found that there was a significantly lower risk of death and critical outcomes, so they could in fact play a protective role, especially in patients with hypertension.”
There is still no evidence that the same effect would be seen in people without high blood pressure.
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