57 58 A randomised trial carried out to assess the effects of blood pressure lowering drugs on sexual function confirmed the recognised effects of thiazides but showed that other classes of blood pressure lowering drug (including β blockers) did not differ from placebo.
On the contrary, Reappraisal of European guidelines on hypertension management (2009) suggested that all major antihypertensive drug classes, that is, diuretics, ACE inhibitors, calcium antagonists, angiotensin receptor antagonists and β blockers do not differ significantly for their overall ability to reduce blood pressure (BP) in HTN.
Because of the small number of participants not taking beta blockers and even if patient characteristics did not differ significantly between individuals with and without beta blocker intake, it is still possible that the observed differences in the estimated air pollution effects are related to something other than medication intake.
Overall risk did not differ between alpha-blocker users and non-users.
More individuals with metabolic syndrome by ATP-III criteria were using diuretics (27.5 vs. 9.7%, P < 0.001) or β-blockers (27.5 vs. 6.7%, P < 0.001) than those without metabolic syndrome, but use of cholesterol-lowering medications, calcium channel blockers, ACE inhibitors, aspirin, or estrogen therapy did not differ significantly.
In addition, in our study, the rate of use of cardiac and renal protective medications was higher (almost 93% for blockers of RAS) than previously observed [ 25], and did not differ between the two groups.
Yet when directly compared, with the main exception of the β-blocker, only subgroup estimates of treatment effect from the two studies did not differ statistically.
Moreover, they did not differ in the frequency of lipid-lowering drugs, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors and antiplatelet drugs.
In the same way, RI did not differ between patients treated with renin angiotensin system (RAS) blockers (p = 0.65) and those who were not.
