Women Receive Fewer Benefits from Common Blood Pressure Medications

Two commonly prescribed blood-pressure medications are less effective at reducing women’s heart disease risk, according to a new study.

Researchers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center found that the two medications, losartan and atenolol, had a similar effect on lower blood pressure in both men and women. But the medications were not as effective for women in reducing left-ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), a thickening and enlargement of your heart muscle that is a sign of future heart disease.

Based on two common measurements of LVH reduction, women generally saw less improvement in the thickening and enlargement of the muscle in their heart’s left ventricle after taking the blood-pressure medications. Women were 32 percent less likely than men to have a greater reduction in their Cornell product score and 15 percent less likely than men to see any reduction in their LVH based on the Sokolow-Lyon voltage score.

"Women have a greater chance of dying of their first heart attack and from stroke, and they tend to have more cardiovascular problems later in life compared with men," says lead author Dr. Peter M. Okin, a cardiologist and Professor of Medicine in the Greenberg Division of Cardiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. "Certain tell-tale indicators of high-blood pressure, like LVH regression, clearly show that men and women do not respond the same to hypertension drugs."

 Angela Taylor, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia Health System, says this study may help doctors understand why more women develop heart failure than men.

“We've known for a while that women are more likely to develop heart failure as they age than are men. The type of heart failure that women commonly develop, called diastolic heart failure, is often caused by high blood pressure,” she says. “High blood pressure causes the heart muscle to thicken over time, resulting in the heart not functioning as well. This study suggests that the medications we use to treat high blood pressure may not be as effective in women as they are in men.”

While there are other blood pressure medications on the market, Taylor says, at this point it’s not clear whether they are more effective for women. What the study highlights is the need to aggressively treat high blood pressure in women.

“This study also reinforces the idea that women need to be treated early in the disease process,” Taylor says. “If high blood pressure is treated before the heart muscle begins to thicken, perhaps heart failure could be prevented.”