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Blood pressure and painkiller mix cause kidney problems

Published: 11 January 2013

People who take a combination of blood pressure drugs and certain painkillers are at increased risk for serious kidney problems that doctors should watch for, Canadian researchers say. People who are prescribed a combination of blood pressure medications and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs are often at high risk of kidney injury, which is associated with about half of potentially preventable deaths in hospital.
For individuals, the risk of combining antihypertensive drugs with NSAIDs is low but worth being aware of, researchers say. Researchers in Montreal and Italy designed a study to investigate the association between the drug combination and kidney failure for 487,372 users of blood pressure medications in the U.K., which they said has the world's largest computerized database of long-term health records from primary care. "The use of a
triple therapy combination was associated with an overall 31 per cent higher risk, which is driven by a nearly twofold increased risk in the first 30 days of use," epidemiology Prof. Samy Suissa of McGill University and his co-authors concluded in Tuesday's British Medical Journal.

Read more at The Gazette, CBC News, MedPage Today, heart.org

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