Dark chocolate and essential hypertension: What researchers have discovered

The relationship between the consumption of dark chocolate and the reduction of the risk of hypertension, Chinese cardiologists found.
Doctors at Shaoxing and Zhuji Hospitals in China describe how they used Mendelian randomization to find out more about the relationship between dark chocolate and hypertension.
Hypertension is a term used to describe chronic high blood pressure.
The term primary or idiopathic hypertension is used when the hypertension is of unknown etiology. In recent years there have been reports that consumption of dark chocolate provides certain health benefits due to its content of flavanols. Some of these include reducing inflammation and other factors involved in coronary heart disease.

Dark chocolate and essential hypertension

In the new study, researchers looked at whether dark chocolate can reduce essential hypertension, which has been blamed for a host of diseases, from strokes to heart attacks.
The study was based on the use of a technique called Mendelian – an epidemiological methodology based on studying differences in genetic profiles in a way that shows that a particular intervention was the one that caused a particular effect. The advantage of the method is its ability to reduce the risk of reverse causality.
By studying genetic profile data from 64,945 people of European descent, researchers looked for associations between the health benefits of dark chocolate consumption and conditions such as heart failure, blood clots, stroke, coronary heart disease and essential hypertension.
Looking at their data, the researchers found what they describe as a significant association between regular consumption of dark chocolate and a reduced risk of essential hypertension—and some association between dark chocolate consumption and a reduced risk of venous thromboembolism .
On the other hand, the team found no association between dark chocolate consumption and any of the other conditions. They argue that their findings are strong enough to warrant further study of dark chocolate and its components to determine whether it, or any of its components, may be useful in the treatment of essential hypertension.
The findings are published in the scientific journal Scientific Reports .