Journal of hypertension
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Journal of hypertension · Nov 2006
Review Meta AnalysisHow strong is the evidence for use of beta-blockers as first-line therapy for hypertension? Systematic review and meta-analysis.
To quantify the effect of first-line antihypertensive treatment with beta-blockers on mortality, morbidity and withdrawal rates, compared with the other main classes of antihypertensive agents. ⋯ Beta-blockers are inferior to CCBs and to RAS inhibitors for reducing several important hard end points. Compared with diuretics, they had similar outcomes, but were less well tolerated. Hence beta-blockers are generally suboptimal first-line antihypertensive drugs.