Last year, we posted an article about the recall of several blood pressure medications due to the unexpected appearance of an impurity found in them. If unfamiliar with this earlier recall, you can read about it here.

According to the CDC, about 32% of Americans suffer from high blood pressure. If that doesn’t sound like that many, then consider the fact that this means that 1 of every 3 people have high blood pressure. The really sad thing is that only about 54% of people with high blood pressure take measures to control it – such as medications, diet and exercises.

We hear that high blood pressure increases the risk of heart disease, heart attacks, strokes and other deadly health conditions. The CDC reports that 410,000 Americans died in 2014 due to the direct effect of high blood pressure.

Whether due to diet, lack of activity, pollution, genetics or combinations of these, it seems that certain regions of the United States have the highest and lowest incidences of high blood pressure (hypertension). States with the highest incidences are Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia. States with the next highest rates of hypertensions are Alaska, New Jersey, Delaware, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Kansas. States with the lowest rates of hypertension are more scattered – California, Oregon, Montana, Utah, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

After the previous blood pressure medication recalls, millions of Americans checked their medications to see if they were taking any of the recalled medications. I was one of them and was relieved to learn that my hypertension medication was not on the recall list.

However, a year later, there is another recall for medication used to treat high blood pressure, as reported:

You may want an MBA. But you want to avoid NMBA.

NMBA stands for N-Methylnitrosobutyric acid, something that you don’t want in your blood pressure medications. But alas, this probable carcinogen continues to appear in various medications at higher than acceptable levels.

The latest news is that Torrent Pharmaceuticals Limited is further expanding its recall of Losartan Potassium Tablets USP and Losartan Potassium/hydrochlorothiazide tablets, USP, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA announcement includes five more lots of these medications. The additional lots add to the lots of blood pressure medications that have been recalled in the past 14 months or so.

Why all of the recalls of medications used to treat hypertension? The FDA cannot possibly run tests on every medication made on a regular basis. They have to pick and choose when ones they test and the more tests they finally get to, the more issues they are discovering. It makes one wonder just how safe any of our medications are? Yet, can we afford not to take them? It’s a difficult choice.