What Causes High Blood Pressure?
High blood pressure is a big health problem in the United States. Almost half of all Americans have it. We often hear that eating too much salt or not exercising enough can cause high blood pressure.
But for some people, the problem might be more specific, and it’s not their fault. It could be due to a condition called primary aldosteronism.
What is Primary Aldosteronism?
In the 1950s, a doctor named Jerome Conn found out about this condition while working at the University of Michigan.
Primary aldosteronism happens when a small, usually harmless tumor grows on a gland near your kidneys. This gland, called the adrenal gland, helps control the salt and water levels in your body.
The adrenal gland makes a hormone called aldosterone, which helps keep the balance of salt and water just right. But if there’s a tumor, the gland can make too much aldosterone.
This messes up the balance, making your body hold onto more salt than it should. This leads to high blood pressure. Getting rid of the tumor through surgery usually fixes this kind of high blood pressure.
New Discoveries About This Condition
Scientists are still learning more about primary aldosteronism. Juilee Rege and William Rainey, two researchers, made a big discovery recently.
They looked at the tumors from people in Japan, Germany, and Michigan. They found a change in a gene that seems to cause the disease in some people.
The gene is usually responsible for managing zinc levels in the body, but something goes wrong in the tumor. The researchers noticed that the change in the gene makes the tumor create too much aldosterone, leading to high blood pressure.
Interestingly, they found this change only in men and only in the cells of the tumor, not in other parts of the body.
This discovery opens up new questions about why some people get this disease. The researchers are now planning to study more about how this condition varies between men and women, people of different races, and different age groups.
They’re particularly interested in studying Black Americans, who have higher rates of high blood pressure compared to other groups.
Why This Matters
High blood pressure can lead to lots of health problems like heart attacks and strokes. Understanding more about what causes high blood pressure can help us find better ways to treat it.
It could also lead to more personalized treatment. For example, if doctors know you have this kind of high blood pressure because of a tumor, they could suggest surgery to remove it instead of giving you medicine that might not work.
This discovery also makes us think about other possible reasons for high blood pressure. By understanding the genetics behind it, doctors can give more specific treatment that will work better for each person.
It’s an important step forward in figuring out how to best manage and treat this common but often complicated condition.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about Common high blood pressure drugs may cause memory problems and findings of A common blood pressure medication could help you live longer.
For more information about blood pressure, please see recent studies that early time-restricted eating could help improve blood pressure, and results showing 12 foods that lower blood pressure.
The research findings can be found in Nature Genetics.
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