BP pills before sleep lower diabetes risk too

Taking blood pressure pills at bedtime rather than in the morning not only reduces BP while asleep but also lowers the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, promising research has revealed. The team of Spanish researchers found that there was a 57 per cent decrease in the risk of developing new-onset Type 2 diabetes in the bedtime-treated group.

“In hypertensive patients without diabetes, ingestion of the entire daily dose of one or more blood pressure-lowering medications at bedtime results in significantly improved sleeping blood pressure control and prevention of new-onset diabetes,” said Ramon Hermida from University of Vigo, Spain. The team did a randomised trial of 2,012 hypertensive patients without diabetes (976 men and 1,036 women).

Patients were randomised to ingest all their prescribed hypertension medications upon awakening or the entire daily dose of one or more of them at bedtime. Investigators who did not know which patients were in which group assessed the development of new-onset diabetes. During a median follow-up of six years, 171 participants developed Type 2 diabetes.

Patients in the bedtime -- compared with the morning-treatment group -- showed a significantly lower asleep mean BP and a greater sleep-time relative BP decline. In the bedtime-treated group, there was a lower-prevalence of a phenomenon known as “non-dipping” in which, patients' night time BP falls by less than 10 per cent compared to daytime BP.

Further analysis showed that greater reduction in risk of developing diabetes was observed for bedtime compared with awakening treatment. The authors conclude that before bed regimen of taking anti-hypertensive medications is as safe as taking them in the morning. (The research was published in Diabetologia - the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.)