High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is one of the most common health problems around the world. It happens when the pressure of blood pushing against the walls of your arteries is too high. This condition can quietly damage the body over time and lead to serious health problems like heart attacks, strokes, and kidney damage.
In most cases, doctors don’t know exactly what causes high blood pressure. This is called “essential hypertension,” and people with it often have to take medicine every day for the rest of their lives to keep it under control.
But now, researchers in the UK have made a discovery that could help a small group of people actually cure their high blood pressure instead of just treating it.
A team of doctors from Queen Mary University of London, Barts Hospital, and Cambridge University Hospital used a new kind of scan to find tiny lumps in a hormone-producing gland called the adrenal gland.
These small lumps, called nodules, make too much of a hormone called aldosterone. Aldosterone causes the body to hold onto salt, which raises blood pressure. Too much aldosterone can make it very hard to treat high blood pressure with regular medicine.
These adrenal lumps are very small—so small that they are often missed in regular scans. For more than 60 years, doctors have known these lumps could cause high blood pressure, but they couldn’t find a good way to identify them.
There was a special test that could sometimes detect which adrenal gland was making too much hormone, but the test was very difficult and only a few hospitals in the world could do it. Even when it was done, it didn’t always give clear answers.
That has now changed. In this new study, the doctors used a special kind of CT scan along with a dye called metomidate. This dye sticks only to the lumps that are producing too much aldosterone and makes them show up clearly in the scan. The dye is slightly radioactive, but it is safe to use. The scan itself is quick, painless, and worked on every patient in the study.
They tested this new method on 128 patients with high blood pressure caused by high levels of aldosterone. In about two-thirds of these people, the scan found a lump in one adrenal gland. Doctors then removed the lump through surgery, and many of the patients were able to stop taking blood pressure medication altogether.
To be even more accurate, the scan was combined with a simple urine test that checked for aldosterone levels. This helped the doctors figure out which patients were most likely to be cured after surgery.
Professor Morris Brown, one of the study leaders, explained that the lumps are very easy to miss on normal scans. But with their new dye, the lumps “glow” for a few minutes and become easy to spot. This discovery means that many people who were stuck taking blood pressure medicine for life might now have another option.
Professor William Drake, another leader of the study, said this breakthrough came after years of research and teamwork. He also praised the scientists who continued their work even while supporting hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The research also connects to earlier studies by the same team. They found that about 5 to 10 percent of people with high blood pressure may have a change in a gene in their adrenal glands. This change makes the glands produce too much aldosterone, which raises blood pressure and increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
People with this condition usually don’t respond well to standard blood pressure medicine, which is why finding and treating the source is so important.
This new scan gives hope to those people. The study was published in the journal Nature Medicine, and it could change the way doctors treat high blood pressure in the future.
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies that early time-restricted eating could help improve blood pressure, and natural coconut sugar could help reduce blood pressure and artery stiffness.
For more information about blood pressure, please see recent studies about How to eat your way to healthy blood pressure and results showing that Modified traditional Chinese cuisine can lower blood pressure.
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