Taking Hypertension Drugs at Night can Prevent Type 2 Diabetes, Study Reports

The timing of when people take their hypertension (high blood pressure) drugs can affect their risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a new study reported.

For this study, the researchers examined data on 2,012 Spanish non-diabetic adults with high blood pressure. The participants were randomly assigned to take either all of their blood pressure medications in the morning or at bedtime. The team found in the very end that taking blood pressure medications at nighttime instead of waiting for the morning could reduce type 2 diabetes risk by more than 50 percent. The average follow-up time was six years with a total of 171 people developing type 2 diabetes.

During the initial part of the study, the researchers found that "non-dippers" had a greater risk of type 2 diabetes. "Non-dipping" is a phenomenon that tends to occur in hypertensive people. Non-dipping means that blood pressure levels do not fall drastically during sleep like they normally would in people with healthy blood pressure. The team conducted a follow-up clinical trial to see if they can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes in these non-dippers.

In that trial, the researchers examined the effect of lowering blood pressure during sleep by having non-dippers take their medications at bedtime, on type 2 diabetes risk. They found that for every 14-point decrease in the non-dippers' systolic blood pressure measured during sleep, they experienced a 30 percent decline in their risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

"Changing the time of ingestion of hypertension medications, a zero-cost intervention, has been shown to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and, in keeping with the new findings reported in Diabetologia, also significantly reduces the risk of developing diabetes," lead author, Dr. Ramon Hermida, a professor of medicine at the University of Vigo in Spain, said. "The results from this randomized clinical trial indicate a significant 57% decrease in the risk of developing diabetes in the bedtime compared to the awakening treatment regimen."

The study was published in the journal, Diabetologia.