LONDON (Reuters) - A new British study on possible risks to blood pressure pills, which millions of people around the world are considering, has left many people healthy, the Telegraph newspaper reported Saturday.
A recent study, involving nearly 2 million Britons, showed that ACE inhibitors could increase the risk of lung cancer by about one-third among those with chronic disease.
The study looked at the consequences of taking the drug on an enzyme that controls blood pressure for at least 10 years. The results showed that 31 percent of those were exposed to lung cancer.
The study also indicated that the risk over time, increased with those who were taking medication for five years, by 22 percent.
The researchers cautioned that, although the relative risk was small, the sheer number of drugs involved made the results highly credible.
"Although the relationship between medicine and cancer is modest, it is one of the most widely prescribed drugs," said study author Laurent Azoulay, a cancer epidemiology specialist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
"Thus, small relative effects can be translated into large numbers of patients at risk of developing lung cancer," he said.
Previous evidence has linked the drugs of blood pressure and lung cancer to the accumulation of chemicals found in tumors.
