High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease and it costs a lot of money for healthcare services. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it costs about $131 billion every year.
Scientists at Yale University found a potential target for making new drugs to treat high blood pressure. They found a genetic defect that can cause high blood pressure in living creatures.
Almost half of the people with high blood pressure can’t get their blood pressure to a healthy level below 120/80 mmHg. This is a problem because it puts them at risk for heart disease.
The scientists wanted to understand more about high blood pressure and how to treat it. They looked at data from many studies to see what genes might be involved in blood pressure.
They found a gene called PRDM6 that helps control blood pressure.
By studying mice with different versions of the PRDM6 gene, the scientists learned that it helps control how many renin-producing cells there are in the body during development.
Renin is an enzyme that can cause high blood pressure when there’s too much of it.
The scientists found that a drug called aliskiren, which blocks renin, could help lower blood pressure in the mice with the genetic defect.
The scientists think their discovery could lead to new drugs to help people with high blood pressure. They want to keep studying PRDM6 to learn more about how it works and how to treat high blood pressure.
The scientists also say that since PRDM6 is an epigenetic regulator, understanding how it causes high blood pressure could give them clues about how environmental factors can affect blood pressure.
The study was done by Arya Mani and his team, and it was published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies that early time-restricted eating could help improve blood pressure, and coconut sugar could help reduce blood pressure and artery stiffness.
For more information about blood pressure health, please see recent studies about wearing a blood pressure cuff may help prevent stroke and results showing that living in an apartment may harm your blood pressure.
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