Thousands more heart attacks and strokes may occur in Britain as almost half a million missed the opportunity to start taking blood pressure drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic, a study suggested.
The article, which was published on Jan. 19 in Nature Medicine, also said thousands could have missed out on cholesterol-reducing drugs every month.
The analysis was carried out by researchers at the BHF Data Science Centre—a unit within the Health Data Research UK (HDRUK) that was set up in partnership with the British Heart Foundation (BHF).
Using prescription data as a proxy to estimate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the management of cardiovascular disease (CVD), researchers analyzed 1.32 billion records of community-dispensed CVD medications to 15.8 million people from England, Scotland, and Wales between April 2018 and July 2021….