New drugs can nearly halve the risk of stroke or heart attack in patients with high blood pressure, according to a researcher at a European cardiology conference. “Our research shows that the older medications do not offer as much protection as the newer, more modern ones,” said Bjoern Dahloef, a senior professor at the Sahlgrenska University hospital in Gothenburg and one of the authors of a massive European study on high blood pressure.For the study, entitled Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial and presented at the ongoing European Society of Cardiology Congress hosted by the Swedish capital, some 19,000 men and women with high blood pressure took, over a five-year period, either beta-blocker medications aimed at slowing their heart rate or newer drugs aimed at dilating blood vessels.
