Antihypertensive drugs and risk of cancer: network meta-analyses and trial sequential analyses of 324,168 participants from randomised trials.

Summary: For years, there has been debate over whether certain high blood pressure medications might inadvertently increase the risk of cancer. To settle this, researchers conducted a massive analysis involving over 324,000 participants from 70 different clinical trials. The results are largely reassuring: taking standard blood pressure drugs individually—whether they are diuretics, beta-blockers, calcium-channel blockers, or ACE inhibitors—does not increase your risk of developing cancer or dying from it. However, the study did find a specific exception: patients taking a combination of two particular types of drugs (ACE inhibitors plus ARBs) showed a slightly increased risk. For the vast majority of patients on standard single-drug therapies, the benefits of controlling blood pressure continue to far outweigh the risks.