High blood pressure is a major health concern, affecting millions of people worldwide. While many effective drugs can treat it, some people’s bodies just don’t respond well to them.
For these folks, not having a treatment can lead to scary stuff like heart attacks or strokes.
That’s why researchers have been working hard to find alternative options. One team has now tested a new drug called lorundrostat, and the results look promising.
How Does Lorundrostat Work?
Your body has a hormone called aldosterone that tells your kidneys to hold onto salt. The more salt in your system, the higher your blood pressure can go.
Scientists think that if they can control how much aldosterone your body makes, they can control your blood pressure too.
That’s where lorundrostat comes in. This new drug aims to keep aldosterone in check, hopefully lowering blood pressure as a result.
The team’s research focused on people who have high blood pressure that doesn’t get better with standard treatments. To make sure the drug works and is safe, they ran a “phase II clinical trial.”
Basically, they gathered 163 people who had hard-to-treat high blood pressure and gave them either lorundrostat or a placebo (a pill with no medicine in it) every day for eight weeks.
What Did the Study Find?
So, did it work? The good news is that people who took lorundrostat saw a nice drop in their blood pressure.
On average, the top number in their blood pressure reading (that’s the “systolic” number) went down by about 14 points.
Even better? The drug seemed especially effective for people who weighed more.
Plus, the team didn’t find any major side effects, like messed-up cortisol levels (another hormone in your body) or too much potassium in the blood. So, it seems like the drug is safe and ready for more testing in a “phase III” trial.
What’s Next?
The next step is more research to confirm these results. If this new drug passes the next round of testing, it could become a new option for treating high blood pressure, especially for those who can’t take current medications.
In summary, this new drug lorundrostat might be a game-changer for people struggling with high blood pressure that doesn’t respond to existing treatments.
It’s a ray of hope for better health and a future where high blood pressure is easier to manage for everyone.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about 10-minute scan could help detect and cure the cause of high blood pressure and findings of The magic of B vitamins for high blood pressure.
For more information about blood pressure, please see recent studies about new ways to reduce blood pressure effectively, and results showing plant-based foods could benefit people with high blood pressure.
The research findings can be found in JAMA.
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