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Hypertension Doctors find important therapy for hypertension
High blood pressure is one of the world's most common diseases and is associated with the risk of serious sequelae. High blood pressure increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and long-term organ damage, reports Mainz University Medical Center. Here, researchers have now discovered a new option for the treatment of high blood pressure.
With the previous treatment approaches, the long-term consequences of hypertension can often be insufficiently prevented, report the Mainz researchers around Professor. Philip Wenzel. However, a newly discovered interaction between factors of blood clotting and the inflammatory response may open up new treatment options. The scientists report on their current study results in the journal "Science Translational Medicine".
(Image: M.Dörr & M.Frommherz / fotolia.com) Clotting factor in hypertension amplified activated
The researchers from the Center for Cardiology and the Center for Thrombosis and Hemostasis (CTH) at the University Medical Center Mainz have been able to prove that in patients with hypertension the so-called coagulation factor XI is increasingly activated. If this blood coagulation factor inhibited, "then the hypertension can be significantly lower, and there are fewer inflammatory reactions," said the Department of Medicine Mainz. This discovery opens new therapeutic options for the treatment of high blood pressure and inflammatory diseases.
Hypertension causes many deaths
According to the doctors, around 25 million people in Germany suffer from hypertension. An unrecognized or untreated high blood pressure significantly increase the risk of consequential damage to the cardiovascular system and the kidney, which could have fatal consequences for those affected. Around every fourth dying from the consequences of hypertension, so the statement of the doctors.
Surprising study results
The effects have been known for some time that high blood pressure is associated with inflammation of the vessel walls and consequently vessel damage. However, the now established connection with blood clotting is a groundbreaking new discovery. "It was completely surprising for us that a coagulation mechanism can also play a major role in the development and development of hypertension," reports Prof. Wenzel. The researchers had tested in their study, the blood pressure-increasing hormone angiotensin II in an animal model and found that angiotensin II triggers an inflammatory response in the vessel wall.
Therapeutic inhibition of blood coagulation factor in hypertension
In addition, the researchers observed that the inflammatory response was significantly enhanced by components of the blood clotting system. For this, the blood coagulation factor XI is responsible. Its real purpose is to drive the activation of coagulation on the surface of the platelets, where it is supported by surface receptors of the platelets. "The study results surprised us with this complex interaction of different factors and cells: Both the inflammatory response and the development of high blood pressure could be significantly reduced by a therapeutic inhibition of the blood coagulation factor XI," emphasizes Prof. Wenzel.
New treatment approach against hypertension
By the inhibition of the coagulation factor, which is known to play only a minor role in the normal haemostasis, read, according to the doctors even reduce the extent of kidney damage significantly. Also, it had become clear in the subsequent examinations of patient samples that there was an increased coagulation activation on the platelets in patients with elevated blood pressure. Here, the blood coagulation factor XI is also the driving force. "These findings suggest that a drug-based inhibition of the blood coagulation factor XI could help hypertensive patients," said the Department of Medicine Mainz.
Consequential damage in the future better avoidable
There are many indications that the success of therapy and thus also the life expectancy of patients with hypertension could be significantly improved with an inhibited blood coagulation factor XI, emphasizes Prof. Wenzel. So far, the multifactorial disease hypertension has been treated with a combination of different drugs, but the current research results open new treatment options for hypertension and its consequential damage by means of an inhibition of blood clotting factor, the researchers concluded. (Fp)