Hypertension.

Abstract

The awareness of hypertension as one of the major risk factors for mortality and morbidity in NIDDM has increased greatly in the past few years. It is now accepted practice to measure BP at least yearly in all such patients. Unfortunately, one cannot yet be sure to what extent diabetics benefit from anti-hypertensive therapy, and the simple assumption that treatment of the increased risk reduces that risk must be constantly questioned. No specific data are yet available for NIDDM, though it would be remarkable if the benefits of decreased cerebrovascular mortality and probable reduced total mortality (Sleight, 1987) did not apply to the higher-risk diabetic subject, at least at the higher levels of diastolic pressure (greater than 105 mm Hg). There is, though, no evidence that mortality or morbidity of coronary artery disease, the major killer in NIDDM, is reduced even in non-diabetics and the present author does not consider there to be any evidence suggesting that thresholds for treatment of hypertension in uncomplicated patients with NIDDM should be lower than those for non-diabetics, unless progressive nephropathy is present. Current advice in the non-diabetic is that levels of blood pressure in adults consistently above 95 mm Hg warrant therapy, aiming to reduce it below 90 mm Hg (World Health Organization, 1986). While the importance of hypertension should not be underestimated, it should not deflect attention from the other risk factors. Cessation of smoking, and by implication its reduction, will, for all smoking patients but the most hypertensive, produce a greater reduction in cardiovascular and total mortality risk than will anti-hypertensive therapy. There are also early signs that effective dietary and/or drug treatment of significant hyperlipidaemia lowers cardiovascular mortality. Choice of anti-hypertensive therapy is especially important, not only for efficacy but also for quality of life, in patients who already suffer major restrictions on diet, freedom and life expectancy. While controlled trials in the subject are of immense importance in determining optimum therapy, there is currently no evidence to favour any particular group of drugs, and an individual patient's therapy should be decided on the basis of their own circumstances.