Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) News and Research

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Hypertension (or high blood pressure) is a condition where the pressure of the blood flowing through the arteries of the body is higher than it should be. Much like the pressure of the air in a tire, if the pressure of the blood is too high it can damage the arteries and organs of the body. Just like the tire, if the pressure suddenly becomes very high, catastrophic events can happen. Similarly, if the pressure remains somewhat elevated for a long enough period of time, premature wear and failure can occur.

Hypertension has its worst effects on the heart, kidneys, eyes, and brain. High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, hemorrhages of the retina of the eye, and generalized atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries all over the body).

Role of asymmetric dimethylarginine in damaged blood vessels

A substance found naturally in the blood vessel lining is thought to contribute towards diseases associated with the circulation system, such as heart failure, high blood pressure, stroke and kidney disease.

4 Oct 2005

Gleevec's uses might expand even further

Gleevec (Imatinib) is a representative of the newest generation of cancer drugs. The substance conveys its potent anti-proliferative effect by selectively supressing the tyrosine kinase pathway. The Giessen lung researchers now issue a first report of this substance as a new target therapy for pulmonary hypertension

4 Oct 2005

Mayo Clinic researchers find earliest sign of nerve change due to diabetes

Mayo Clinic researchers have found that subtle change in nerve conduction is the first reliable sign of nerve complications from diabetes and that this change can be measured long before other symptoms or signs of nerve damage develop.

3 Oct 2005

Discovery of mechanisms causing portal hypertension

A physician-scientist at UT Southwestern Medical Center and his research team have identified mechanisms causing a potentially deadly type of hypertension that results from liver damage – findings that could lead to its prevention.

3 Oct 2005

Lack of oxygen in body tissues creates a defect of red blood cells that further exacerbates the condition by constricting blood vessels in the lung

What's more, the team demonstrated through studies in people and animals that inhalation of a 'souped up' form of nitric oxide, which targets red blood cells, reverses the blood abnormality to restore normal lung pressure.

3 Oct 2005

Possible therapy that could control blood pressure

A newly developed virus that introduces a blood pressure-lowering gene into cells and enables that gene to maintain blood pressure at healthy levels for four months promises to take gene therapy for the disorder a step closer to reality, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in a report released online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

27 Sep 2005

Racial discrimination is a major cause of poor health for American blacks

In the first national study of its kind, sociologists from Rice University and University of California (UC)-Irvine find that black immigrants who arrive in America from black-majority regions of the world are healthier than those from white-majority regions; but regardless of how healthy blacks immigrants are when they come to the U.S., the longer they stay, the more their health erodes.

27 Sep 2005

New treatment option for chronic sinusitis

Acclarent on Saturday unveiled their new treatment option for chronic sinusitis, the Balloon Sinuplasty procedure. Results from the initial safety and feasibility study of this unique, catheter-based treatment for chronic sinusitis were presented by William Bolger, MD, FACS.

26 Sep 2005

Clinical trial participants may not be as unrepresentative of general clinical populations as often reported

It is often suggested that the results of clinical trials are affected by the fact that the patients who volunteer for a trial are more likely to take their medication effectively than those in standard care. This supposition is, however, strongly refuted in the results of a new study revealed at the British Pharmaceutical Conference in Manchester.

26 Sep 2005

Aggressive public health efforts to control hypertension may help preserve cognitive abilities as well as cardiovascular health

Not only does high blood pressure adversely affect mental functioning, but the correlation appears to be stronger among African-Americans than among whites, researchers report in the current issue of Psychosomatic Medicine.

26 Sep 2005

Researchers map genetic location that explains why certain blood pressure-lowering drugs aren't effective for some people

"The findings bring us a step closer to developing targeted therapies for patients with high blood pressure who might otherwise be started on medications that won't help," said lead author Sandosh Padmanabhan, Ph.D.

26 Sep 2005

Lead exposures early in life combined with high blood pressure in working age adults may lead to diminishing cognitive abilities in later life

Exposure to lead in early childhood and adolescence may contribute to hypertension-related decline that can impair a person's cognitive abilities, according to a new study presented at the 2005 American Heart Association's High Blood Pressure Research meeting.

26 Sep 2005

"Designer" rats help show how declining estrogen after menopause can affect hypertension

Scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have created a better research rat – the first to enable them to study how declining estrogen after menopause can affect hypertension, heart failure and kidney damage.

26 Sep 2005

Long-term alcoholics are at a higher risk for postoperative infections following elective cardiac surgery

Previous research has shown that post-surgery rates of disease and death are two-to-five times greater among long-term alcoholics than nonalcoholic patients. Of all the possible complications, infection can be the most serious.

22 Sep 2005

Important new lessons learned from aspirin

No other medicine is as common, inexpensive, and yet powerful in so many ways as aspirin; yet despite a century of experience with the drug, researchers are still learning important new lessons, while raising new questions, according to seven special articles in the Sept. 20, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

20 Sep 2005

Low-dose aspirin might prevent the cardiovascular damage known to arise from use of the painkiller rofecoxib (Vioxx)

Their findings that a chemical imbalance might underlie such damage could also lead to the development of anti-inflammatory drugs without the adverse side effects, the researchers said.

20 Sep 2005

Public hospital patients are often denied access to Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) surgery

Public hospital patients are often denied access to one of the most effective forms of weight loss treatment Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) surgery, a Monash expert says.

19 Sep 2005

Women with atrial fibrillation face a higher risk of ischemic stroke than men

Women with atrial fibrillation who are not on anticoagulant therapy have a higher rate of ischemic stroke and face a higher absolute risk for stroke than do men with the condition, according to a joint study

19 Sep 2005

Lowering blood sugar levels could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease

Lowering blood sugar levels could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease in both diabetics and non-diabetics, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions.

19 Sep 2005

Two common weight loss supplements promoted as ephedra-free and safe for dieters caused increased heart rate among healthy people

...and could have harmful health effects in some people, according to a study by University of California - San Francisco (UCSF) scientists. Their placebo-controlled clinical study is the first to examine the pharmacological effects of these re-formulated dietary supplements.

10 Sep 2005

Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) News and Research

Further Reading

Role of asymmetric dimethylarginine in damaged blood vessels

Gleevec's uses might expand even further

Mayo Clinic researchers find earliest sign of nerve change due to diabetes

Discovery of mechanisms causing portal hypertension

Lack of oxygen in body tissues creates a defect of red blood cells that further exacerbates the condition by constricting blood vessels in the lung

Possible therapy that could control blood pressure

Racial discrimination is a major cause of poor health for American blacks

New treatment option for chronic sinusitis

Clinical trial participants may not be as unrepresentative of general clinical populations as often reported

Aggressive public health efforts to control hypertension may help preserve cognitive abilities as well as cardiovascular health

Researchers map genetic location that explains why certain blood pressure-lowering drugs aren't effective for some people

Lead exposures early in life combined with high blood pressure in working age adults may lead to diminishing cognitive abilities in later life

"Designer" rats help show how declining estrogen after menopause can affect hypertension

Long-term alcoholics are at a higher risk for postoperative infections following elective cardiac surgery

Important new lessons learned from aspirin

Low-dose aspirin might prevent the cardiovascular damage known to arise from use of the painkiller rofecoxib (Vioxx)

Public hospital patients are often denied access to Laparoscopic Adjustable Gastric Banding (LAGB) surgery

Women with atrial fibrillation face a higher risk of ischemic stroke than men

Lowering blood sugar levels could reduce the risk of coronary heart disease

Two common weight loss supplements promoted as ephedra-free and safe for dieters caused increased heart rate among healthy people

Bringing real-time analytics to downstream bioprocess monitoring

Designing fluidic architecture for scalable diagnostic platforms

Evaluating new approaches for rare disease genomics

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