According to new research from Hypertension, a journal from the American Heart Association, a future vaccine may help to lower blood pressure over the long term.
The DNA vaccine has been designed to target angiotensin II, a hormone responsible for constricting blood vessels and therefore raising blood pressure. Constricting the blood vessels also makes a person’s heart work harder than it should.
The study, which involved rats as test subjects, suggests that a future vaccine may be a novel alternative for treating people with high blood pressure for up to six months. This new vaccine would eliminate the need to take a daily blood pressure pill.
The hypertensive rates received the vaccine through needle-less injections three times every two weeks. Not only did the vaccine lower blood pressure for six months, but the rats also showed a decrease in tissue damage to the heart as well as blood vessels commonly linked to hypertension. There did not appear to be any damage to the liver or kidneys.
"The potential of a vaccine for hypertension offers an innovative treatment that could be very effective for the control of non-compliance which is one of the major problems in the management of hypertensive patients," Hironori Nakagami, study co-author and professor at Osaka University in Japan, said. "Further research on this DNA vaccine platform, including increasing the longevity of blood pressure reduction, may eventually provide a new therapeutic option to treat hypertensive patients."