INDIANAPOLIS, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- Indiana University School of Medicine research suggests two inexpensive, but overlooked, drugs may help patients with uncontrolled high blood pressure.
Dr. Howard Pratt and colleagues studied two compounds -- diuretics amiloride and spironolactone -- in a group of 98 African-American patients with high blood pressure
On average, blood pressures of the patients taking either amiloride or spironolactone individually, or both drugs, dropped significantly with no side effects.
The two drugs work by limiting the amount of sodium kidneys reabsorb during the process of producing urine.
"The kidneys do an incredible job of holding on to sodium, which was important to the survival of our early ancestors who lived in a salt-poor world, but today there's so much salt in the food we eat that the kidneys end up holding onto too much sodium," said Pratt.
The study appeared in the September issue of the journal Hypertension.
