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Drugs commonly used for high blood pressure and heart disease may also help people with a lung condition called COPD, reports a new study. Researchers found that people taking these drugs, called beta-blockers, had fewer flare-ups of COPD and were less likely to die during the 10-year study than those who did not.

Medical tradition says that the beta blockers used to treat heart disease shouldn’t be given to people who also have severe lung disease, but a new Dutch study suggests the tradition is wrong.

Beta blockers

A study of more than 2,200 people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a diagnosis that includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, found better survival among those given beta blockers than those who did not get the drugs, claims a report in the May 24 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine by physicians at University Medical Center Utrecht.

“To our knowledge, this is the first observational study that shows that long-term treatment with beta blockers may improve survival and reduce the risk of exacerbation of COPD in the broad spectrum of patients with a diagnosis of COPD,” the researchers wrote.

“This is strikingly different from what our medical students are taught today,” said Dr. Don D. Sin, a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and co-author of an accompanying editorial. “Our traditional teachings are wrong.”

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