“…We further excluded four studies (Fletcher et al, 1993;Shah et al, 2011;Springate et al, 2015;Wong et al, 2015) that compared the effect of β blockers with that of other antihypertensive medications. Finally, 20 cohort studies (Hole et al, 1993;Powe et al, 2010;Barron et al, 2011;Lemeshow et al, 2011;Melhem-Bertrandt et al, 2011;Diaz et al, 2012;Yusuf et al, 2012;Aydiner et al, 2013;Botteri et al, 2013;Holmes et al, 2013aHolmes et al, , 2013bJohannesdottir et al, 2013;Livingstone et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2013;Assayag et al, 2014;Cata et al, 2014;Chae et al, 2014;De Giorgi et al, 2014;Grytli et al, 2014;Jansen et al, 2014) and four case-control studies Hicks et al, 2013;McCourt et al, 2014) involving 76 538 participants were selected for metaanalysis. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the studies included.…”