High Blood Pressure Drugs Lead to Bone Loss

A study in the April 14, 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine reports that diuretics, commonly prescribed for hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart failure, can also leach calcium from bones and cause significant bone loss in older men taking the drugs.
Researchers at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut tested the bone density levels of 3,269 men over the age of 65. They reexamined the men 4.6 years later and also collected data on medication use during that time.
84 of the men were continuous users of loop diuretics, 181 were intermittent users and 3,004 were non-users. At the end of the study period, the average annual rate of decline in total hip bone mineral density was –0.33 among the non-users, -0.58 among the intermittent users and –0.78 among the continuous users, about 2.5 times that of the non-users.