Is It Feasible To Treat High Blood Pressure With A Vaccine?

For the majority of people who suffer from high blood pressure the only long-term solution is daily pills and repeated monitoring from your doctor with adjustments to your dosage or changes in your tablets as required. So just how much better would life be if you were able to simply have a vaccination for high blood pressure and do away with your daily tablets?

Roughly one in three Americans are suffering from high blood pressure but, because of the complicated mixture of medication frequently required for treatment, only some one third of these people in fact have got their blood pressure problem under control. However, this might be set to change in the not too distant future.

In a trial which was carried out earlier this year a group of 72 people (65 men and 7 women with an average age of 51 years 6 months) who were suffering from mild or moderate hypertension were given a low dose (100 micrograms) vaccine, a high dose (300 micrograms) vaccine or a placebo. This process was repeated after a month and at the end of twelve weeks.

Fourteen days after the final injection it was noted that the high dose vaccine patients were showing a drop in excess of 5 mm Hg in their systolic blood pressure and almost 3 mm Hg in their lower diastolic blood pressure reading.

Perhaps more significant, it was also discovered that the typical, and sometimes dangerous, peek in blood pressure which happens in the morning between 5 am and 8 am was also lowered considerably by 25 mm Hg systolic and 13 mm Hg diastolic.

The trial patients all tolerated the vaccine well and no safety issues arose during the course of the trial.

Okay, but exactly how does this vaccine work?

Presently blood pressure is controlled with several drugs which are designed to act in different ways. Two of the classes of drugs often used are angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors (such as Lotensin, Mavik, Aceon, Monopril, Prinivil, Univasc, Capoten, Altace, Accupril and Zestril) and angiotensin-2 (AT-2) receptor blockers (such as Atacand, Avapro, Micardis and Teveten). All of these drugs block the action of a molecule which causes the blood vessels to narrow and thus to raise the pressure within the blood vessels.

The trial vaccine, which is known as CYT006-ANgQb, is designed to work in precisely the same way as these two currently used drugs and so may certainly provide an alternative for those individuals whose blood pressure is currently controlled using AT-2 receptor blockers or ACE inhibitors.

So what about those individuals whose blood pressure is being controlled with the alternatives of beta blockers (such as Sectral, Betapace, Tenormin, Lopressor, Ziac, Corgard, Kerlone, Toprol XL, Inderal, Cartol and Zebeta) or calcium channel blockers (such as Norvasc, Vascor, Plendil, Isoptin, Lotrel, Cardizem, Procardia, Sular and Verelan)?

Of course, it is early days yet and additional trials will be needed before we see a vaccine in general use to treat high blood pressure. If the scientists are correct however it seems likely that this vaccine will be effective for a lot of sufferers, regardless of the treatment currently being given.

Naturally time will tell, but this is without doubt a very encouraging development.

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