Work published in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that common over-the-counter pain relievers - the NSAIDS - may increase the risk of high blood pressure. Dr. John Forman, of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, MA, is the study's principal investigator, and attributes the increased risk to the effects that the drugs have on prostaglandins - molecules in the body that help to regulate blood pressure, among other things.

Still, not everyone is sure that Dr. Forman's work has truly revealed a link between NSAIDS and blood pressure risk. Dr. Franz Messerli, a respected hypertension expert from St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York, says that the data is too early and the effects unproven. Dr. Forman comments, "The study is interesting, but the odds ratios are low. In addition, these drugs are very heterogeneous, and it seems unlikely to me that they would all do the same thing in increasing the risk of hypertension when they act quite differently. Okay, prostaglandin inhibition makes some sense, but only some."