A new study reveals that the timing of taking in anti-hypertensive drugs could have an effect on the development of type 2 diabetes. In the study published in the journal Diabetologia, the researchers found out that taking high blood pressure drugs at night could lessen type 2 diabetes risk.
According to the researchers from the University of Vigo, Spain, if the patient takes the drugs a bed time, rather than in the morning, it could help reduce blood pressure throughout the night and could also help reduce the risk of diabetes in half, reports Science Daily.
"The results from our prospective study indicate lowering asleep blood pressure could indeed be a significant method for reducing the risk of developing diabetes," Dr Ramón Hermida, Professor of Medicine at the University of Vigo said in a statement as reported by WebMD.
In people who suffer from high blood pressure, they often suffer from a condition called 'non-dipping'. It is a phenomenon that causes the blood pressure to stay heightened even if the person is asleep. Normal people do not experience this. They also found out that non-dippers are at higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than normal individuals.
They have conducted two studies, an initial study which seeks to prove the concept that reducing the blood pressure during sleep could prevent the occurrence of diabetes among patients. In their follow up study, they investigated whether taking the entire daily dose of one or more hypertension drugs at night would have greater effect on the reduction of diabetes risk than taking them upon waking up.
Thus, they found out that there is a 57% decreased risk of diabetes in people who took the medicines at bedtime than those who take them on the morning.
The authors commented in their study, "In hypertensive patients without diabetes, ingestion of the entire daily dose of one or more blood pressure-lowering medications at bedtime compared with ingestion of all such medications upon awakening results in significantly improved sleeping blood pressure control and prevention of new-onset diabetes."