Lipid lowering: another method of reducing blood pressure?

Modern management of cardiovascular risk depends on assessment of cardiovascular risk factors. Hypertension and hyperlipidaemia are synergistic risk factors for cardiovascular events. Both show a degree of cross-correlation through sharing mechanisms of pathogenesis including insulin resistance and endothelial dysfunction. This article reviews the common pathways leading to dyslipidaemia and hypertension and the effects diet and lipid-lowering drug therapies have had on correcting blood pressure in patients with essential hypertension. Both statins and fibrates have shown a capability to lower blood pressure by up to 8/5 and 15/10 mmHg respectively, in some small-scale clinical trials and have effects on arterial wall structure and hence pulse wave velocity. This blood pressure action may account for some of the clinical effects of lipid-lowering drugs on cardiovascular risk. Thus, lipid lowering may provide an additional method of correcting hypertension in some high-risk patients. However, data from large-scale intervention trials are either absent or ambiguous. Definitive large-scale trials to investigate the antihypertensive effects of lipid-lowering drugs are required, although end point studies examining the interaction of lipid-lowering and antihypertensive drugs to determine optimum combinations are already under way.