Roll Up Your Sleeve: Hypertension vaccine passes early test

Science News ^ | Week of March 15, 2008 | Nathan Seppa

[neverdem]

A new vaccine lowers blood pressure in hypertensive people, a study shows. The finding breaks ground in a field dominated by drug therapy.

Surges in blood pressure make physical exertion possible, but chronically elevated pressure spells trouble. Scientists have entertained the idea of immunizing people against high blood pressure for decades, but it hasn't been easy. The only other vaccine to reach the testing stage in people failed to reduce blood pressure.

A vaccine may augment or offer an alternative to blood pressure medications, known to cause side effects.

Several compounds orchestrate blood pressure changes, including a small protein called angiotensin. When cleaved by an enzyme, angiotensin signals blood vessels to constrict, increasing pressure.

Researchers created the new vaccine by binding angiotensin to a harmless fragment of a virus. The protein "is then recognized by the immune system as a virus," says study coauthor Martin Bachmann, an immunologist at Cytos Biotechnology in Schlieren, Switzerland. The immune system makes antibodies against angiotensin and pulls it out of circulation.

Bachmann and his colleagues gave 48 people with mild-to-moderate high blood pressure three injections of the vaccine over 12 weeks. Some received higher doses than others. Another 24 volunteers received sham injections. All patients used devices that monitored their blood pressure regularly day and night.

Two weeks after the last shot, those getting a higher dose of vaccine averaged systolic (top number) blood pressure that was 9 points less than those getting the placebo shots, the researchers report in the March 8 Lancet. The diastolic (bottom number) reading dropped only 4 points, a difference that could reflect chance.

However, compared with the sham-injection group, participants getting the higher vaccine dose had reductions of 25 points for the systolic reading and 13 points for the diastolic during early morning, when their risk of stroke...

[Rennes Templar]

ANY vaccine makes me nervous much less one for blood pressure. This is more medical sophistry. My 17 yr old daughter has had no vaccines of any kind, and she’s a picture of health.

[AdmSmith]

They should test this vaccine against aggressive persons in prisons. If angiotensin II goes down there will be lower level of Vasopressin and thus lower aggressive behavior of males against other males.

[AdmSmith]

My 17 yr old daughter has had no vaccines of any kind, and she's a picture of health.

Yes, as long as she is not exposed to pathogens. This is extremely dangerous, you should talk to your physician.

[Rennes Templar]

You, like most Americans, are caught in the pathogen fear paradigm. She has traveled the world and been exposed to all kinds of things. Her immune system functions at a high level as she does not eat the standard American diet. Fact is, vaccines side effects are responsible for more disease than they proport to prevent.

[whd23]

Fact is, vaccines side effects are responsible for more disease than they proport to prevent.

As proven by all the kids I see stricken by polio....

[RosieCotton]

Interesting...

[mkjessup]

My daughter owns a potpourri manufacturing company and has a barrel of olive leaves. I need to google to see how to make the extract—if possible.

Good evening CGGma!

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, if convenient - could you let me know how you make out with making your own olive leaf extract?

I've had pretty good luck with the store bought variety but if there is a natural alternative, that is always preferable.

[mkjessup]

I think my SIL takes red rice yeast.

I've not heard of that, I'll look up the particulars, thanks!

[mkjessup]

I refuse to take drugs. They cure nothing.

I try to avoid them if at all possible. Many moons ago, I had an acid reflux issue and my doctor gave me some samples of Tagamet, I tried it, and it did seem to cut down on stomach acid, all was well and suddenly I began having some very odd perceptions of distance, space, time, etc., I called up the doctor and he says "oh yeah, some people experience confusion and hallucinations, you might want to cut the tablet in two and see how that works, ok?"

I went him one better. I pulverized the tablets with a hammer and flushed the whole mess down the toilet. No more Tagamet for me! LOL

By the way, here is a useful website I've found helpful:

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com

[mkjessup]

Thanks for the link FRiend! It’s appreciated! :)

[2Jedismom]

Me too. It started sometime in December and I caught it at the beginning of February. I suddenly started having pressures in the 200s/120s. They've done every kind of test but can find no cause. I'm otherwise healthy.

Then I had a kind of stroke in my right eye a few weeks ago, before they got it under control. The vision is blurry, but praise the Lord...it was just in my eye.

I'm on three bp meds now...Lopressor 50mg twice a day, Lisinopril 20mg twice a day and a Catapres patch once a week. I'm slowly weaning myself off the Lopressor (with my nephrologist’s approval) because I don't believe it ever really helped. My BP somewhat stabilized and runs mostly in the 130s/90s.

Here's something kinda funny. Stress or exercise lowers my BP and relaxation causes it to spike. So if I would argue with my spouse, the bp would go down and if I would sit too long or relax and watch TV, it would spike very high. For a few weeks there, I could hardly sit down.

I had several female relatives that died of hemorrhagic stroke in their late 40s and early 50s (I'm 45). This was before there were medications to treat high blood pressure. I'm pretty sure my fate would've been sealed if I'd been diagnosed in an earlier time.

I'm grateful for the medications that lowered the BP. I believe they are gifts from God. Even though they don't cure it, they allow a few more years on this earth with my jedis.

[pallis]

God bless you and keep you, and I hope you get your blood pressure problem worked out, so you can have many more years here.

[webstersII]

“As proven by all the kids I see stricken by polio....”

Your point is silly.

The only known cases of polio in the US for the last 10-15 years are kids who got the vaccine.

The oral live polio vaccine caused a few dozen cases of polio every year until they finally took it off the market. Of course, it was too late for those kids.

[whd23]

I was responding to a previous poster's claim that vaccines cause more damage to people then they help. Given that:

There were usually about 13,000 to 20,000 cases of paralytic polio reported each year in the US before the introduction of Salk inactivated polio vaccine....

and

From 1980 through 1999, there were 152 confirmed cases of paralytic polio cases reported...144 [of the] cases were vaccine-associated paralytic polio (VAPP) caused by live oral polio vaccine (OPV).

So while, yes it's terrible that 144 children were harmed by the vaccine, the polio vaccine has clearly done more good for people then harm.

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