Item Revisited: The Solution to Coughing from an Ace Inhibitor

Taking Iron or changing to a new Ace Inhibitor can stop the cough in its tracks. 

Many persons with diabetes have blood pressure problems. The Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE) inhibitor blood pressure medications are ideal for this problem.  

One of their side benefits is to reduce pressure in the kidneys and to protect them from damage. Studies have shown that these medications actually reduce the rate of kidney damage caused by diabetes. Unfortunately, these drugs also affect the lungs, and about 20% of people treated with them develop an annoy­ing cough. Although this cough is not dangerous, some patients have to stop taking their ACE inhibitor medication because they can’t tolerate the cough.  

Losartan (Cozaar®), is an angiotensin II receptor (type AT1) antagonist, that has  been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. This drug has many of the benefits of the ACE inhibitors on your blood pressure and kid­neys, but it does not cause a cough. Check with your patients and see if coughing is a problem with the Ace inhibitor that they are taking. 

Also, as reported in an earlier addition, increasing their iron can also help with the side effect of coughing. For more info go to: http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/issue84/item5.shtml

FACT:

New research is suggesting that most of the physical changes chalked up to growing old – insulin resistance, decreased lung function and elevated systolic blood pressures – are not due to aging at all, but to inactivity. A New England Journal of Medicine study of more than 6,000 older men published earlier this year showed that poor physical fitness was a better predictor of death than smoking, hypertension or heart disease.

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