Blood Pressure Good News - Project 2025 Bad News
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Hypertension - Good News
A new study from the University of South Wales found that a new pill combining low doses of three different anti-hypertensive medications surpassed a current high quality standard care treatment plan using one anti-hypertensive drug.
Researchers estimate that about 1.28 billion adults around the world have hypertension, also known as high blood pressure.
There are a variety of medications available to treat high blood pressure. It is not uncommon for a person to have to take multiple different medications for blood pressure on a daily basis.
Having multiple medications to take each day can increase a person’s “medication burden” or “pill burden.” Past studies show that a person’s total medication burden may be associated with non-adherence to prescribed drugs.
A new study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has found a new pill that combines low doses of three different anti-hypertensive medications surpassed a current high-quality standard care treatment plan starting with only one anti-hypertensive drug.
This study was part of the Phase 3 clinical trial of the new triple combination hypertension medication called GMRx2, manufactured by George Medicines.
For this study, researchers recruited about 300 African study participants with uncontrolled hypertension living in Nigeria.
Half of the participants received the GMRx2, a once-daily pill combining low doses of three anti-hypertensive medications: telmisartan, amlodipine, and indapamide.
The other half of the study participant pool received the current high blood pressure standard care treatment plan recommended by the Nigerian Ministry of Health, which starts with one medication and is followed by second and third drugs added as needed.
This new paradigm is based on the evidence that at low doses, most benefits are maintained and most adverse effects avoided.
Results - Lower BP and Stable Results in 1 month
After six months of treatment, Rodgers and his team found that study participants taking the GMRx2 combination pill had a 31 mmHg lower home systolic blood pressure, compared to a 26 mmHg lower in the group following standard care protocols.
Previous research correlates a 5 mm Hg reduction in systolic blood pressure to a reduced risk for major cardiovascular events by about 10%.
The scientists also discovered that after only one month, 81% of study participants receiving the GMRx2 combination pill achieved clinic-measured blood pressure control versus 55% following standard care for hypertension.
This improvement continued at six months with 82% of the GMRx2 achieving control, compared to 72% receiving standard treatment.
Results have been submitted to the FDA last month and there are plans to submit to other countries as soon as possible. The next stage is implementation research.(Medical News Today)
Trump Has Our Health in the Cross Hairs - Look Out
Project 2025, the far-right extremist agenda developed by the Heritage Foundation, would increase the power of corporations at the expense of Americans’ health and well-being. It would give more control to health care companies by jeopardizing protections that help many patients access and afford the care they need.
Project 2025 would also take us back to a time when corporations were free to pump dangerous toxins into the air we breathe and the water we drink. If Project 2025’s plan for a far-right administration takes effect, corporations will profit while patients are saddled with high bills, less accessible health care, more exposure to toxins, and more harmful health conditions. (Center for American Progress)
1. Ending Medicare drug price negotiation
Project 2025 calls for eliminating the historic Medicare drug price negotiation program created by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
2. Paving the road to fully privatize Medicare by making Medicare Advantage the default enrollment
Project 2025 calls for making private insurance plans—through the Medicare Advantage (MA) program—the default for all Medicare enrollees. When Medicare enrollees opt in to MA plans, the federal Medicare program pays private companies to operate the plans for a per-member, per-month fee to provide benefits. Yet these plans don’t save taxpayers money and, on the contrary, cost the government $83 billion more per year than government-operated, traditional Medicare would cost to cover the same enrollees.
3. Removing consumer protections from non-subsidized ACA marketplace plans
Project 2025 calls for removing the historic consumer protection provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) for nonsubsidized marketplace plans. Before the ACA, insurers could deny or charge people with preexisting conditions—as many as 1 in 2 Americans—more for coverage, set stringent annual and lifetime coverage limits, and even deny or increase the costs of coverage for women based on their gender.
Under Project 2025, these protections would be stripped away for nonsubsidized ACA marketplace plans—in other words, for people who buy ACA marketplace insurance without federal subsidies. Those plans would also have no limits set on how much of people’s premiums have to be spent on actual health care, enabling insurers to once again reap profits at the expense of patients.
4. Promoting junk insurance plans that expose consumers to financial catastrophe
The extremists behind Project 2025 call for making it easier to buy “junk” insurance plans that leave enrollees vulnerable to high out-of-pocket costs, specifically association health plans and short-term plans. There are countless stories of consumers who have bought junk insurance and didn’t realize they got a bad deal until it was too late.
5. Enabling corporations to more easily expose Americans to dangerous pollutants and hazards
Project 2025 calls for pausing and revisiting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules and revoking critical EPA powers, which would greatly limit the agency’s ability to protect Americans from environmental toxins such as lead poisoning, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) known as “forever chemicals,” soot, and other environmental hazards. Since 1988, nearly three-fourths of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions were linked to a mere 100 companies. Emissions are tied directly to Americans’ health; exposure to water pollution and air pollution is associated with a variety of health conditions, such as lung, kidney, and heart problems as well as emergency department visits, hospital admissions, child development problems, and increased mortality.
Summary
The extremist right wants return to the 1950s and 1960s when there was little regulatory or environmental protection for our healthcare and our health. If those things matter to you
VOTE ACCORDINGLY.
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