Study Found Cheap Blood Pressure Meds Are Best. No One Cared
There’s a lot of talk these days about comparative effectiveness — trying to figure out how existing drugs stack up against one another, in an effort to both save money and improve patients’ health.
But, as this morning’s New York Times notes, a big comparative study of blood pressure medicines published a few years back shows just how tough it can be to persuade docs and patients to change their ways — particularly if a study shows that an old, cheap drug is better than newer, more expensive options.
The federally funded study, known as Allhat, enrolled more than 30,000 patients and cost more than $100 million. The results, published in JAMA in 2002, were clear: For patients with high blood pressure and other heart disease risk factors, an old, cheap class of drugs known as diuretics are the best blood pressure medicine to start with. The researcher even got the word out the way drug companies do, with academic detailing and talks by opinion leaders.
Diuretics’ market share rose a little bit in the year after the study announced — to about 40%, from 30-35%, the NYT says. Then they plateaued, at a level far below what some researchers think would […]
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