If you take medicine to lower your blood pressure or to treat heart failure, including angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) , it’s important to continue taking it. Stopping your medication or even skipping a dose may cause problems.
Patients with high blood pressure or heart failure are frequently given RAAS antagonist drugs. These medications include ACE inhibitors (for example, enalapril or lisinopril), ARBs (for example, losartan or valsartan] etc . They lower blood pressure, reduce strain on your heart, and improve blood flow by relaxing your blood vessels.
The site of action for these drugs also appears to be the means by which coronavirus disease 2019, also called COVID-19, enters the human body.
In the HFSA/ACC/AHA statement, experts stress there is no clinical data showing that ACE inhibitors or ARBs have an effect—good or bad—on COVID-19 in people, or in patients with COVID-19 and heart disease.
Therefore, the experts recommend that patients who have been taking these medicines to treat heart failure, high blood pressure, or ischemic heart disease (a condition like coronary artery disease in which blood flow is limited to the heart), continue to do so.
