Looking for new ways to treat high blood pressure

Impairment of the norepinephrine re-uptake transporter in hypertension

High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease, but many people with high blood pressure are not receiving treatment for it. Understanding how high blood pressure develops may reveal new ways to treat it and reduce people’s risk of developing heart disease. When blood pressure is high, the chemical noradrenaline is released from the nervous system. This speeds up the heart and further increases blood pressure when the body is stressed, thereby adding to the already harmful effects of high blood pressure. We don’t fully understand how the nerves release more noradrenaline, but it may in part be due to a defect in the transporter molecule that clears noradrenaline from the circulation back into the nerves. This defect appears to happen before high blood pressure actually develops. Professor David Paterson and colleagues have been awarded a grant to find out if this transporter is defective in nerve cells that release noradrenaline from rats that have high blood pressure. They will also try to find out if they can improve how it is cleared from the circulation by giving drugs to speed up the transporter. This research could pave the way for new drugs to be developed to treat high blood pressure.