Painkillers Cause High Blood Pressure

New research has shown that men who use painkillers often have greater
blood pressure as compare to those who do not use painkillers. read
more
http://thehealthcare.blogspot.com/20...-pressure.html

On Mon, 04 Jun 2007 04:17:00 -0700, kaash
wrote:

New research has shown that men who use painkillers often have greater
blood pressure as compare to those who do not use painkillers. read
more
http://thehealthcare.blogspot.com/20...-pressure.html


This shows association but doesn't show cause-and-effect. An equally
plausible deduction would be "Pain causes high blood pressure" and
another plausible deduction would be "People who develop High Blood
Pressure tend to start taking painkillers."

If they want to test whether or not painkillers CAUSE high blood
pressure, they should take people not in pain and have them take
either painkillers or placebos in a double-blind test. That would let
the researches judge whether or not the painkillers were themselves
causing high blood pressure.

Instead, from a starting population that didn't have high blood
pressure they looked at who started taking painkillers and who
developed high blood pressure. Did they develop pain first, start
taking painkillers, and then get high blood pressure? Either the pain
or the painkillers could be responsible for the high blood pressure in
that case. Did they develop high blood pressure FIRST and then start
taking baby aspirin because high BP is a risk factor for heart attacks
and the baby aspirin might help prevent it? From the description of
the report you just can't tell ANYTHING about cause and effect.