Kim’s public health blog

According to research from the University of TexasHealth Science Center at Houston a new study provides added justification that a thiazide-type diuretic is the best first-choice drug for hypertensive patients. Why do we have to keep reinventing the wheel? A study on Veteran’s completed 50 years ago showed similar findings. The public always wants New Technology or New Drugs in the mistaken belief that new is always better. Had we applied the information from the original VA study and the Framingham study as carefully as the ‘Joint National Committee on High Blood Pressure’ wants to do today we would have saved millions of lives, reduced disability and saved billions of dollars. As I have noted in other blogs population data often take years to collect. In the arena of chronic diseases, in particular, we should require that before new drugs are put on the market that the outcome of their use is evaluated in 10’s of thousands of people, as tends to be the case in studies in Europe before approval. We have to keep recalling new drugs not because they were ineffective, but once let out into the general population of 300 million people the deficits became evident. No new drugs should be approved without population based studies which could assure us that only useful drugs, with minimal side effects (all drugs have side effects), that perform better than current medicines be approved. Part of the problem can be laid at the doors of ‘research” universities and the publish or perish demand on their scholars, while drug companies are allowed to advertise prescription medicine to the public. We are one of only 2 countries that sllow such a travesty.