High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a serious health issue in the United States. It affects more than 116 million adults and greatly increases the risk of heart disease and stroke.
These are two of the top causes of death in the country. In 2020, high blood pressure played a role in more than 670,000 deaths.
Many people take medicine to try to lower their blood pressure, but not everyone finds it easy to keep it under control. Now, researchers at the University of Virginia have made an important discovery that might lead to better treatments in the future.
The scientists found a key process in the body that helps control blood pressure. By learning how this process works, doctors might be able to develop new medicines that work better and cause fewer side effects.
Blood pressure is partly controlled by calcium in the smooth muscle cells that line blood vessels. These muscle cells use calcium to help blood vessels tighten or relax. When blood vessels tighten, blood pressure goes up. When they relax, blood pressure goes down.
Doctors often use medicines called calcium channel blockers to lower blood pressure. These drugs stop too much calcium from entering the cells. This helps the blood vessels relax and lowers blood pressure. But calcium is important for many other jobs in the body. That means these drugs can cause unwanted side effects in some people.
The new study found something surprising. Inside the smooth muscle cells are two very small structures, called “nanodomains.” These nanodomains act like little messengers. They tell the blood vessels when to tighten and when to relax.
In healthy people, the signals from these nanodomains are balanced. That means the blood vessels tighten and relax as needed. But in people with high blood pressure, the signals that tell the vessels to tighten are too strong, and the signals to relax are too weak. This keeps the blood vessels too tight all the time, causing high blood pressure.
This is exciting news because it gives scientists a new idea for how to treat high blood pressure. Instead of blocking calcium throughout the whole body, future medicines could aim only at these nanodomains. That might help lower blood pressure without causing other problems linked to calcium.
More research is needed before this can become a real treatment. But this discovery is a big step toward understanding how the body controls blood pressure. It could lead to safer and more effective medicines that treat the cause of high blood pressure, not just the symptoms.
If successful, this research could help millions of people stay healthier and lower their risk of heart disease, stroke, and other serious health problems.
For now, this study gives new hope in the fight against high blood pressure—a condition that touches the lives of so many people.
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