The University of Vigo in Spain conducted two studies that have suggested that taking medication for hypertension before bed, instead of after getting up in the morning, can notably decrease the chance of developing diabetes.

As per the CDC, over 1 in 3 people in the US have hypertension, or blood pressure that is higher than normal but can't be considered as high blood pressure. Besides diabetes, the condition can also cause heart attack, stroke, chronic heart failure and kidney disease.

While talking to Endocrine Today, Dr. Ramon Hermida, director of the bioengineering and chronobiology laboratories at the University of Vigo, said, "Changing the time of ingestion of hypertension medications, a zero-cost intervention, has been shown to reduce cardiovascular morbidity and mortality and, in keeping with the new findings reported in Diabetologia, also significantly reduces the risk of developing diabetes".

Dr. Ramon said that this randomized clinical trial findings have pointed towards a notable 57% decrease in the risk of developing diabetes in the bedtime than to the awakening treatment regimen.

During the two studies, researchers focused on different facets of the same question that is lowering blood pressure more effective at preventing diabetes when patients are asleep or awake?

During the first study, published in Diabetologia, researchers sought to find if the risk for diabetes was better indicated by blood pressure while up or asleep.

In the first study, 1,292 men and 1,364 women between the ages of 36 and 65 were recruited, with none of them having diabetes. Their blood pressure was somewhere between normotension and hypertension.

The second study was also published in Diabetologia. During this study, researchers randomized 2,012 participants, including 976 men and 1,036 women with the same age range as the first study, into groups taking their blood pressure medications either in the morning or at night before sleeping.

As of 2013, 382 million people have diabetes worldwide. Type 2 makes up about 90% of the cases. This is equal to 8.3% of the adult population with equal rates in both women and men.

In 2014, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) estimated that diabetes resulted in 4.9 million deaths. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that diabetes resulted in 1.5 million deaths in 2012, making it the 8th leading cause of death.

"Lowering asleep blood pressure, a novel therapeutic target requiring blood pressure evaluation, could be a significant method for reducing new-onset diabetes risk," the researchers wrote.