Blood Pressure Drugs Prevent Some Headaches

Blood pressure-lowering drugs also prevent some headaches, British researchers report.

For their review, the researchers looked at studies in which patients were taking drugs to lower their blood pressure, and also reported whether or not they had headaches. The researchers found that one-third fewer people reported headaches while taking blood-pressure-lowering drugs than did people taking a placebo.

"We show that a blood pressure-lowering drug seems to prevent headaches," said study author Malcolm Law, a professor of epidemiology at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine of Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of London. "They seem to prevent about a third of headaches."

The findings appear in the Oct. 11 issue of Circulation.

In the study, Law's group looked at 94 trials that included 17,641 people taking drugs to lower their blood pressure, or a placebo. Drugs included diuretics, ACE inhibitors and angiotensin II receptor blockers.

The researchers found that 8 percent of the people taking a blood pressure drug reported having headaches, compared with 12 percent of the people who received a placebo. In addition, the prevalence of headaches was significantly reduced, no matter which drug the patients received.

"It's basically a curiosity," Law said. "It's been going on for 100 years -- high blood pressure-hypertension headache as it was called."

Law was careful to note that such drugs should not be taken to reduce the number of headaches one might have. "We are not saying that doctors use blood pressure-lowering drugs to treat headaches," he said. "There isn't a strong clinical implication [from this study] that some people assume there must be. It's a curiosity."

One expert believes that headache is a sign of severe high blood pressure.

"This is an observation that has been made for years," said Dr. Vasilios Papademetriou, a professor of medicine at Georgetown University. "It was a minor point that has been made in several publications."

"We see headache frequently in patients who have a systolic blood pressure of 200 mmHg or more. It is less common with milder forms of hypertension," he added.

Recent studies have found that angiotensin II receptor blockers prevent 40 percent to 50 percent of headaches, Papademetriou said. "Perhaps because these drugs are totally side-effect free, a patient feels so much better he reports a lack of headaches," he said.

Papademetriou thinks this observation is significant. "It's another important reason to be aggressive in treating as many patients with hypertension as we can," he said.

Patients who have frequent headaches should have their blood pressure checked, Papademetriou advised. "Many patients can have fewer headaches if they keep their blood pressure under control."

Another expert thinks the new findings may encourage people to keep taking their blood pressure medications.

"There are many other important reasons for people to control their blood pressure, but we know that many people do not adhere to their medical regimen," said Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, a professor of cardiology at Yale University Medical School. "This information might give some people a practical reason to take their medications regularly."

More information

The American Heart Association can tell you more about high blood pressure.

Could Fatty Foods Help the Heart?

October 10, 2005 08:41:21 PM PST

Eating stimulates cells in the small intestine to produce a hormone called cholecystokinin (CCK), which aids digestion and gut peristalsis, the motion that moves food through the digestive tract. CCK also triggers satiation -- the feeling of fullness that tells you to stop eating, according to Misha D. Luyer of the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands and colleagues.

This study in rats, published in the Oct. 17 issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, found that fat-induced CCK dampens gut inflammation and prevents immune cells from attacking food as a foreign invader.

Rats fed a high-fat diet were protected against lethal bacteria-induced shock, but rats fed a low-fat diet didn't have the same protection.

In the rats that ate a high-fat diet, CCK sent out signals that prompted the release of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which bound to proteins on immune cells and switched them off, the researchers found.

This may explain why the immune systems of the rats on the high-fat diet didn't react to food proteins and normal gut bacteria as if they were foreign invaders, the study authors said. They also suggested that triggering this fat-induced action in patients may help reduce inflammation-related complications following surgery.

More information

The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about immune response.