High Blood Pressure Treatment - Study Reveals Groundbreaking New Approach

The results of a recent study, which was published in the latest issue of the journal of the Federation of the American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), indicates that a protein known as P450 was able to metabolize the arachidonic acid present in the walls of blood vessels, which results in the creation of a compound known as epoxyeicosatrienoic acid (EET). In studies in mice, the compound EET was found to turn off the genes which are responsible for vascular inflammation, which lead to a relaxation of blood vessels, which in turn lead to reduced blood pressure levels.

Craig R. Lee, M.D., of the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C., commented on these results, as well as the potential benefits that these results could bring to patients with high blood pressure: “We hope these results will help advance the development of new blood pressure lowering agents that increase EETs. In particular, we hope that targeted-use of these new therapies in individuals with a poorly functioning P450-EET system will ultimately prove to be an effective treatment for patients with high blood pressure.”

During this study, the mice that were found to have reduced blood pressure due the protein P450 were also exposed to compounds that usually resulted in increased blood pressure, together with a group of control mice who did not receive the protein P450. The researchers observed that the mice with P450 exhibited lower levels of blood pressure than the control mice following the exposure to the compounds that caused increased blood pressure, and the P450 mice were also found to have lower level of kidney damage than the control mice following the exposure. The researchers believe that the results of this study will be useful in the development of drugs which aims to reduce blood pressure, and will also be useful in the development of other drugs being developed to treat coronary artery disease and strokes.

Gerald Weissmann, M.D., the Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal, commented on the results of this study: “Whether you’re a Type A personality, overweight and out of shape, or genetically wired to have high blood pressure, this research offers real hope. Having discovered a pivotal role for the P450-EET system, scientists can now develop a new class of drugs not only for lowering blood pressure, but also for preventing strokes and heart attacks.”