The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7222 p631
2 November 2002

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Archives of Internal Medicine (archinte.ama-assn.org)

Frequent painkiller use associated with double risk of hypertension

People who regularly use paracetamol or some non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may be doubling their risk of hypertension, say researchers from Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. However, they also say that use of aspirin is not associated with such an increased risk (Archives of Internal Medicine 2002;162:2204).

They conducted a prospective study of just over 80,000 women aged 31 to 50 years who had no previous history of hypertension. Frequency of aspirin, other NSAID, and paracetamol use and incidence of diagnosed hypertension were determined through questionnaires. The results showed that after adjusting for age and other risk factors, only paracetamol and NSAIDs other than aspirin were associated with an increased risk of hypertension (P<0.001 for trend for both).

The relative risk of hypertension for women taking NSAIDs on 22 or more days each month was 1.86 (95 per cent confidence interval, 1.51–2.28) compared with that in non-users. For those taking paracetamol at this level of frequency the relative risk was 2.00 (1.52–2.62).