The pill, which combines three long-established blood pressure medicines into a single tablet, was tested in the TRIDENT trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The trial recruited 1,670 stroke survivors who had suffered an intracerebral haemorrhage. Cardiovascular disease causes more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK, and around 100,000 people in the UK suffer a stroke every year.
In the US, almost one million deaths a year are tied to heart and circulatory disease. Hypertension affects around 14 million adults in the UK and 120 million in the US. Previous research has shown combination pills can outperform standard treatment because patients are more likely to remember one tablet a day.
Our results have the potential to mark a real shift in how we manage blood pressure following a stroke.
The NHS prescribes blood pressure tablets to more than 10 million patients in England and Wales, and an estimated 55 million Americans take similar drugs. "Our results have the potential to mark a real shift in how we manage blood pressure following a stroke," said Professor Craig Anderson, a neurologist at The George Institute and study author. It remains unclear when regulators will approve GMRx2 for NHS use or what its exact cost will be compared to standard treatments.