Early Changes in Plasma and Urinary Potassium in Diuretic-Treated Patients with Systemic Hypertension

In the early 1980s, many physicians began to question whether the use of certain diuretics to treat hypertension induced hypokalemia, and therefore increased the chances of cardiac arrhythmia. In this article, Freis and several of his colleagues at the Veterans Administration Hospital and Georgetown University reported that thiazide-induced hypokalemia in these patients only resulted in small and biologically unimportant losses of potassium.