Originally published October 20 2005
Researchers discover a hormone that can lead to hypertension
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
At the University of Cincinnati, researchers have discovered a hormone that plays a vital role in hypertension and preeclampsia, a potentially dangerous condition that sometimes occurs in pregnant women.
Work is now under way to locate and identify the hormone, which is believed to be produced in very small, but highly potent amounts, so that its hypertension-causing action can be blocked.
Finding and neutralizing this "new player" in the mechanism of hypertension, the UC scientists said, could provide a breakthrough in the prevention of preeclampsia--which so far has been essentially untreatable--and other hypertensive conditions.
One of the Cincinnati research team's areas of interest, preeclampsia is a leading cause of fetal complications, which include low birth weight, premature birth and stillbirth.
The researchers, Jerry Lingrel, PhD, chair of the University of Cincinnati's Department of Molecular Genetics, Biochemistry and Microbiology, and Iva Dostanic-Larson, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the department, report the findings of their three-year study in the Oct. 17, 2005, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The sodium pump contains the target or "binding site" of a group of drugs called cardiac glycosides, such as digitalis, which are commonly used to control congestive heart failure by increasing blood pressure.
This finding in turn supports a long-held hypothesis that there must be a hormone in the body that regulates blood pressure by interacting with the Na,K-ATPase binding site.
"For centuries physicians have controlled cardiac function using compounds like digitalis from the foxglove plant, which are closely related to compounds found in the skin of a poisonous frog and the bark of an African tree once used to make poison arrows," said Dr. Lingrel, "and they all worked on the sodium pump binding site.
Dr. Dostanic-Larson genetically engineered a mouse model specifically for this project.
"Once you know that blood pressure regulation occurs as a result of interaction between the binding site and a hormone--or one of several hormones--you can neutralize the hormone, probably with a monoclonal antibody (an antibody engineered in a laboratory to react with a specific target), and then the hypertension patient is going to be in good shape."
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