Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 17, 1995 TAG: 9501170122
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. LENGTH: Medium
Dr. Russell Luepker of the University of Minnesota said the trend could be explained by a drop he found in the use of blood pressure medication. Hypertension leads to strokes, heart attacks and other ailments.
Luepker tracked three groups of 4,000 to 7,000 people each from Minnesota's mostly white, middle-class population since 1980 and found that while the national campaign to control high blood pressure produced a dramatic drop in deaths for two decades, the curve appears to be turning upward.
The same thing probably is happening across the country, although federal figures, which are not as detailed as Luepker's, have not shown the trend as clearly.
``The national trend is behind ours, and now they're beginning to catch up,'' Luepker said Sunday at the American Heart Association's annual meeting for science reporters.
The decline in the use of blood pressure medication probably reflects two things, Luepker said. One is that controlling blood pressure is no longer at the top of the national health agenda, as it was for much of the past 20 years. The second is that the price of blood pressure drugs has shot up dramatically.
Some of the newest drugs cost as much as $1.50 per pill, which must be taken once or twice a day. Patients paid only 11/2 cents per pill for older drugs.
The campaign to encourage Americans to know their blood pressure and seek treatment if it is high began in 1973, but gradually was overshadowed in the 1980s by efforts to persuade Americans to lower their cholesterol.
Many doctors may have been less careful about assessing and treating patients for high blood pressure because of a ``feeling we'd done very well with it, and there was nothing to worry about anymore,'' Luepker said.
In the United States, high blood pressure generally is defined as anything greater than 140 over 90.
Many factors affect the nation's heart disease death rates, such as diet and exercise. Luepker, however, looked at death rates from strokes, which are less affected by those other factors and directly related to high blood pressure.
by CNB