Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus throughout History

The management of arterial hypertension has undergone multiple changes throughout recent history. From 1957 when it was shown that this condition increases the risk of developing the so-called arteriosclerotic heart disease, to the near future where its approach involves the digital sector, artificial intelligence, biotech and population sciences, hypertension has been diagnosed and treated in different approaches. Its increasing prevalence alongside another epidemic of the modern world, diabetes mellitus, with their amplified risk of cardiovascular events, led to more and more effective ways of assessing their consequences, to updated recommendations and to complex algorithms of pharmacologic agents and lifestyle changes. The new antidiabetic drugs, the GLP-1 receptor agonists and the SGLT-2 inhibitors, not only lower the blood glucose levels, but also have protective cardiovascular effects and contribute to safely lowering the blood pressure. This review represents an overview on the beginnings of hypertension as a cardiovascular risk factors, of the perspectives of approach and of the current European guidelines on hypertension in patients with diabetes mellitus. In other words, it is about hypertension and diabetes mellitus yesterday, today and tomorrow.