E-drug: Blood pressure, WHO and the pharmaceutical industry
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A follow-up to the issue of WHO and influence from the pharmaceutical industry.
Some of you might have followed the debate initiated by the study: Effects
of intensive blood-pressure lowering and low-dose aspirin in patients with
hypertension: principal results of the Hypertension Optimal Treatment (HOT).
Lancet 1998;351:1755-62
(http://www.thelancet.com/newlancet/sub/issues/vol351no9118/body.article1755
.html).
The conclusions, sometimes extended beyond those of the authors, not least
by the pharmaceutical industry and some superspecialists, have been
critisised by GPs, epidemiologists and other public health concerned
professionals. In Norway, the GPs have seriously questioned treating
healthy, mainly males for diastolic pressure as low as 80 mm Hg. The
implications could be tremendous both on cost and the workload of GPs and
many have strong objections to medicalising up to 1/4 of the population and
treating them with up to three antihypertensives!
On Friday, our largest newspaper carried the following headline:'New
guidelines from WHO: Wants the blood pressure lowered'. The WHO guidelines
have been under completion for some time and the medical profession has been
wondering whether WHO would be influenced by the above mentioned study results.
At a press conference arranged by ASTRA (!) in London this week the new
guidelines recommended by WHO and the International Society of Hypertension
were presented. It didn't take long for Norwegian GPs to put the following
on their network: (translated)
'The new guidelines recommend a blood pressure target of 130/85 mmHg or
..driving blood pressure down as far as clinically feasible ...'
However, WHO is not fully comfortable with the situation:
"The official said that the WHO had dissociated itself from the press
conference and a press release on the conference because the conference was
organized by a single pharmaceutical company, Astra."
http://www.reutershealth.com/mednews/open/19990204prc.html
Our newspaper, the following day, also carried a reservation from WHO....
Kirsten Myhr, MScPharm, MPH
Oslo, Norway
myhr@online.no
(co-moderator)
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