Antihypertensive medications, which are used to treat high blood pressure, are associated with an increased risk for eczema in older adults, a new study finds.
The effects were biggest among people who used diuretics and calcium channel blockers, according to the study published in JAMA Dermatology. The study didn’t find that the drugs necessarily cause the skin condition eczematous dermatitis, which also is known as eczema or atopic dermatitis. Instead, there’s a small increased risk for developing eczema in those who take the medications, according to their data.
A team led by Morgan Ye, MPH, a researcher from the University of California, San Francisco, assessed whether there was a connection between antihypertensive drugs and eczematous dermatitis in a group of older adults who lived in the United Kingdom who were aged more than 60 years. All of the participants didn’t have eczematous dermatitis when the trial started.
Among 1,561,358 older adults throughout a median follow-up of six years, 6.7% developed eczema. The risk of developing the skin condition was higher in those who took antihypertensive drugs compared with those not taking them.
Next, the investigators looked at different types of antihypertensive drugs to see if there was a particular link between a type of drug and eczema. The team found that those taking diuretics and calcium channel blockers were more likely to develop the skin condition, whereas those taking angiotensin-converting enzyme, or ACE, inhibitors and beta blockers had lower odds of developing eczema.
“Although additional research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying the association of antihypertensive drug use and eczematous dermatitis, these data could be helpful to clinicians to guide clinical management when an older patient presents with eczematous dermatitis,” the authors wrote.
According to 2017 data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 61.9 million adults take antihypertensive medications.
