Cure for killer blood pressure

 The discovery means treatment could be transformed with targeted drugs

THE secret of what causes high blood pressure has been unlocked in a dramatic breakthrough that could save millions of lives every year.

The discovery means treatment could be transformed with targeted drugs. This could slash the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

An astonishing 10 million Britons are thought to have high blood pressure ? five million of them without even knowing it.

It affects nearly a third of all under-65s and is the root cause of 62,000 deaths a year.

The breakthrough raises the very real hope that the dangerous condition could be rendered completely manageable.

After 40 years of research, scientists have been able to pin down the mysterious role of an enzyme called renin. It was already thought to play a significant role in high blood pressure, but exactly how it did left researchers baffled.

Now, under the eye of one of the world?s leading genetic scientists, a PhD student has discovered why renin can be over-produced in the kidneys, pushing blood pressure up. In the first study to use human kidneys, they found that two vital molecules, known as micro-RNAs, destabilise production of renin.

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation

In the kidneys of those with high blood pressure the renin gene was six times more active while the micro-RNAs were six times less so.

?That is the key,? said Professor Brian Morris, the Australian geneticist overseeing the study.

?These two micro-RNAs are very much lower in hypertensive people. So if you lose those, the renin goes up, thus raising blood pressure.?

Praising his young student, Francine Marques, he declared: ?This is a totally new concept...tremendously exciting.?

Professor Morris, a professor of molecular medical sciences at Sydney University, first began studying renin as a young student in the early 1970s.

He now hopes the discovery will lead to the development of drugs which could be designed to ?knock down renin expression at its source? ? stopping it from creating the high blood pressure.

Ms Marques said the findings, which are published online in Hypertension, a journal of the American Heart Association, are ?a huge breakthrough?.

The team used 42 kidneys donated by cancer patients who had the organs removed for medical reasons.

She said: ?The kidney has been suspected as being the culprit of high blood pressure. But human kidneys are hard to come by.

?As a result, no one had ever before studied human kidneys from hypertensive patients and no one has used the latest genomics technology to probe the kidney in human hypertension.?

Professor Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: ?We?ve known for many years that renin is a key regulator of blood pressure.

?However, scientists are still a way off developing drugs that could help lower blood pressure by targeting someone?s genetic material.?

Breakthroughs of this kind are important, he said, because of the very large death toll among those who suffer high blood pressure. Often also linked to obesity, the condition forces blood through the arteries at an increased pressure. Too much pressure puts a strain on the arteries and the heart itself . Left untreated it can cause an artery to rupture or the heart to fail.

Vast numbers of British adults are prescribed low-dose pills to build up protection against high blood pressure on the NHS.

Yet almost half forget to take their medications daily.