More than 700,000 more adults could be put on blood pressure pills under new guidelines

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Roughly a quarter of adults in the UK have high blood pressure and experts said it was by far the biggest preventable cause of heart attacks and strokes. “However, it is by far the biggest preventable cause of death and disability in the UK through strokes, heart attacks and heart failure.” While promoting lifestyle changes – such as cutting down on salt, losing weight and keeping active – Dr Wierzbicki said the new guidelines were a shift to earlier intervention to slow age-related blood pressure increases. “Lowering the threshold for making a diagnosis of hypertension, or high blood pressure – a condition that already affects a very large number of patients in the UK – is likely to affect thousands, if not millions of patients so this decision must not be taken lightly and must be evidence-based.” Blood pressure drugs including ACE inhibitors and beta blockers cost the NHS as little as 10p a day to prescribe. “Much lower blood pressure targets are required and multiple drugs need to be used right from the start if patients are to achieve the largest reduction in the risks of stroke and heart attack.” In 2015, it was reported that in England, high blood pressure affected more than one in four adults – around 13.5 million people – and contributed to 75,000 deaths.