High blood pressure, often called hypertension, is a common health problem that affects many people around the world.
In fact, about one out of three people globally have this problem.
In Germany alone, nearly 44% of people have high blood pressure. When a person’s blood pressure is too high, it can harm important parts of their body like the brain, heart, and blood vessels.
The Harmful Cycle of High Blood Pressure
This problem doesn’t just increase the chances of serious heart problems like strokes or heart attacks. In a healthy body, the heart, brain, and blood vessels work together to keep blood pressure in check.
But if these parts get damaged by ongoing high blood pressure, they can’t control blood pressure as well. This can make the problem even worse, creating a harmful cycle.
To reduce their blood pressure, people are usually advised to live a healthy lifestyle. This means eating balanced meals with less salt, getting regular exercise, and avoiding smoking.
There are also medicines like beta blockers and ACE inhibitors that can help lower blood pressure.
But these medicines don’t work for everyone. Dr. Suphansa Sawamiphak, a scientist at the Max Delbrück Center, says that many patients don’t get the protection they need from these drugs.
High blood pressure can cause tiny blood vessels in the brain to leak or even die. Dr. Sawamiphak believes that there are other parts of the body that we need to focus on to treat high blood pressure.
A New Research Direction: The Immune System
Recent research has suggested that the immune system, our body’s defense system, might be involved in high blood pressure.
Some parts of the immune system can cause inflammation, which is harmful swelling and heat in the body. This inflammation might lead to high blood pressure and harm our organs.
To understand this better, Dr. Sawamiphak and her team studied tiny fish called zebrafish. They found that high blood pressure in these fish led to an increase in certain immune cells.
These cells can harm the blood vessels in the brain and the “blood-brain barrier,” which keeps harmful things in the blood from reaching the brain.
The researchers also found out that high blood pressure makes these immune cells release more “interferon gamma.” This is a chemical signal that can cause inflammation.
When they stopped the fish’s cells from receiving this signal, high blood pressure didn’t harm their blood vessels or blood-brain barrier.
They saw similar results in mice, which suggests that blocking this signal might help treat high blood pressure in other animals, including humans.
Towards New Treatments for High Blood Pressure
Dr. Sawamiphak’s work gives us a new way to think about high blood pressure and inflammation. The next step, she says, is to learn more about these immune cells and how they affect high blood pressure.
If their findings hold true in larger animals and humans, we might have found new ways to treat high blood pressure. This could be a big help for people who aren’t getting enough protection from current medicines.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about how diets could help lower high blood pressure, and 3 grams of omega-3s a day keep high blood pressure at bay.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies about how tea and coffee influence your risk of high blood pressure, and results showing this olive oil could reduce blood pressure in healthy people.
The study was published in Cardiovascular Research.
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