Having high blood pressure isn’t a rare thing. It’s a condition that many people around the world face every day.
What if there was a drug that could help control this for up to six months with just one shot?
Well, it turns out, there might be one on the horizon!
The Problem with Tablets
The common way to manage high blood pressure, or hypertension, is by taking daily pills. But, it’s not always easy to remember to take your medicine every day.
More than half of the people who have high blood pressure don’t take all their medicine as they should. This makes their blood pressure hard to control consistently.
Controlling blood pressure well can lower the chance of things like stroke, heart attack, and early death. That’s why it’s so important to find more convenient ways to treat high blood pressure.
A New Solution: Zilebesiran
A team of researchers from different places around the world, including the University of Edinburgh’s Center for Cardiovascular Science, conducted a study.
They tested a new drug called zilebesiran at four locations in the UK.
People who received this drug experienced a major drop in their blood pressure that lasted up to six months.
The blood pressure we’re talking about here is the systolic blood pressure, which is about the force of the heart pumping blood around the body.
With a dose of 200mg or more of the drug, blood pressure dropped by over 10 mmHg on average.
At the highest dose of 800mg, it dropped by more than 20 mmHg. This kind of drop can bring someone with high blood pressure into a safer range.
The drug also kept the blood pressure stable throughout the day, which is important because blood pressure naturally goes up and down.
How Does it Work?
Zilebesiran was developed by a US-based company called Alnylam. It works by stopping the production of a hormone in the body called angiotensin.
This hormone makes blood vessels narrow, which can raise blood pressure. Some current drugs for hypertension also target angiotensin.
What makes zilebesiran unique is the way it targets the liver to stop the production of a protein called angiotensinogen. This protein is the source of all forms of angiotensin.
The drug uses something called small interfering RNA (siRNA) to turn off the gene that makes angiotensinogen.
This stops the body from producing it. The siRNA approach has been used to develop treatments for other conditions as well.
Safety and Future Steps
The study involved 107 patients who had high blood pressure. Eighty of them received a single shot of zilebesiran, while 32 received a placebo, which is a fake treatment.
Later, five of the patients who got the placebo were given zilebesiran.
The next steps are to do more studies with more patients to understand better how safe the drug is. Also, researchers want to see how it can improve the health of people with hypertension.
“This is potentially a big step forward for treating high blood pressure. There hasn’t been a new type of drug for high blood pressure in 17 years.
This new approach leads to a big drop in blood pressure that lasts for about six months after one shot,” says Professor David Webb from the University of Edinburgh.
“This could help people remember to take their medicine. The next phase of research will focus on safety and effectiveness before zilebesiran can be approved for use.”
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies about a common and unrecognized cause of high blood pressure, and this small habit can greatly benefit people with high blood pressure, cholesterol.
For more information about high blood pressure, please see recent studies about more efficient way to treat high blood pressure, and potatoes and high blood pressure: what you need to know.
The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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