The study, being conducted at the University of Colorado, was halted early to give the people on calcium blockers a chance to switch to an ACE inhibitor.
12.
Future studies are also expected to help determine whether the difference in heart attacks occurred because calcium blockers actually harm the heart in diabetics, or because ACE inhibitors are better at protecting the heart.
13.
However, use of calcium blockers has dropped back to about the same level as beta blockers for people with coronary disease, due at least in part to troublesome evidence that some forms of calcium blockers might actually be harmful.
14.
However, use of calcium blockers has dropped back to about the same level as beta blockers for people with coronary disease, due at least in part to troublesome evidence that some forms of calcium blockers might actually be harmful.
15.
The drugs lowered blood pressure equally well, but after five years, an alarming difference showed up between the two groups : there were 25 heart attacks in the calcium blocker group, but only five in the ACE inhibitor group.
16.
The net effect, he said, has been to draw doctors away from diuretics, which have been proven to prevent heart attacks and strokes, and toward newer, more costly medications like calcium blockers and ACE inhibitors, whose long-term effects are less well known.
17.
In that study, 470 patients with Type 2 diabetes, the more common, adult-onset form of the disease, were divided into two groups, with 235 taking a calcium blocker and 235 a type of drug known as an ACE ( or angiotensin converting enzyme ) inhibitor.
18.
Unacceptable combinations are non-dihydropyridine calcium blockers ( such as verapamil or diltiazem ) and beta-blockers, dual renin angiotensin system blockade ( e . g . angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor + angiotensin receptor blocker ), renin angiotensin system blockers and beta-blockers, beta-blockers and centrally acting medications.
19.
Dr . Curt Furberg, professor and chairman of the department of public health sciences at Wake Forest University of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said he thought calcium blockers would be proved harmful to diabetics, because diabetes changes cell structure so that calcium blockers bind to the cells more strongly.
20.
Dr . Curt Furberg, professor and chairman of the department of public health sciences at Wake Forest University of Medicine, who was not involved in the study, said he thought calcium blockers would be proved harmful to diabetics, because diabetes changes cell structure so that calcium blockers bind to the cells more strongly.
