Scientists at Queen Mary University of London, along with other research teams, have found a new way to help some people with high blood pressure.
They created a special type of CT scan that can find tiny lumps in the adrenal glands. These small lumps can cause high blood pressure, and removing them may completely cure the condition for some patients.
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is a serious health problem that affects millions of people around the world. It can lead to heart attacks, strokes, and kidney failure.
In most cases, people have to take medicine every day to keep their blood pressure under control. But in some people, the high blood pressure is caused by too much of a hormone called aldosterone. This hormone is made in the adrenal glands, which sit on top of the kidneys.
The new scan helps doctors find tiny nodules that make too much aldosterone. These nodules are found in about 1 out of every 20 people with high blood pressure. The big problem is that these nodules have been very hard to find with regular tests.
The old method used a catheter, which is a thin tube inserted into the body to check hormone levels. This test was painful, hard to do, and not available in many hospitals. Even when done, it often didn’t work well.
This new scan changes everything. In the study, 128 people with high blood pressure caused by aldosterone were tested using the new method. The scan showed that two-thirds of them had a harmless lump in just one of their adrenal glands. These lumps could be removed with surgery, offering a chance to stop taking blood pressure medicine for good.
The scan works by using a small dose of a special dye called metomidate. This dye sticks only to the lumps that produce aldosterone. Once the dye is in the body, the lumps show up clearly on the scan. This makes it easy for doctors to see where the problem is.
Not only is the new scan painless, but it also worked for every patient tested. It’s fast, accurate, and much easier than the old method. Even better, when doctors used the scan along with a simple urine test, they could tell which patients had the best chance of being cured.
In fact, 18 out of 24 people who had the surgery were able to stop taking all blood pressure medicine and keep their pressure at a healthy level.
One reason this discovery is so important is that these hormone-producing lumps are very small—too small to be seen on regular scans. That’s why so many cases were missed before. This new method finally gives doctors a tool to find and treat these hidden causes of high blood pressure.
Until now, nearly all of these cases—about 99%—were never found because the tests weren’t good enough. But with this new scan, more people could get the right diagnosis and possibly be cured.
This exciting research was led by Professor Morris Brown and published in the journal Nature Medicine. It could change the way doctors treat high blood pressure and help millions of people live healthier lives without daily medication.
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