A new drug, baxdrostat, is offering hope for one form of high blood pressure, Banglavision reports. In a small study, patients' blood pressure stayed lower than before even after they stopped taking it. The details were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
More than a billion people worldwide have high blood pressure. In 5 to 10 percent of them, small nodules or benign tumours in the adrenal glands release too much of the hormone aldosterone, which signals the kidneys to retain salt. The condition is called primary aldosteronism, and the usual treatment is surgery to remove the affected gland.
Baxdrostat is an aldosterone synthase inhibitor, which reduces production of the hormone. According to the report it was approved in the United States earlier this year for blood pressure not controlled by existing drugs, and the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is assessing it.
The study involved 14 patients whose blood pressure fell markedly during a three-month trial of the drug. They then took it daily for six to twelve months before stopping, and were followed for up to two years, during which their blood pressure stayed below earlier levels. Professor Morris Brown of Queen Mary University of London, who led the work, said about a quarter of patients kept completely normal blood pressure after stopping all treatment.
Professor Mason Freeman of Harvard University's department of medicine cautioned that it is too early to say whether any patient is cured, and that a larger study is under way. If the effect holds in most patients and lasts, he said, diagnosis and treatment could change significantly and many people might avoid surgery.
Professor Brown believes that when aldosterone falls, levels of reactive oxygen species rise and may selectively destroy the overactive hormone-producing cells, an idea he says can be tested and is now being tested in the laboratory. The study involved only 14 people.
Photo: Jesse K. Alwin, U.S. Marine Corps / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: Banglavision
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