Hypertension and breast cancer: an association revisited?

Hypertension is without doubt a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, especially prevalent in the developed world. Unsurprisingly, the search for newer, better antihypertensive therapy is ever ongoing, whereas the older, more established drug treatments such as diuretics, beta-blockers, calcium antagonists and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors continue to be the mainstay of current treatment guidelines for hypertension. In the main, as a group of drugs, their profiles and complications have been well established from decades of use as well as the many large trials conducted1, 2, 3 that provide unassailable evidence that antihypertensive therapy lowers cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. What is less clear is the relationship between hypertension treatment and overall mortality; indeed, not all studies demonstrate a significant decrease in overall mortality,4 whereas others report a reduction which is negated over time.2

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