Drug compound lowers blood pressure

Gainesville -- U.S. scientists say they've created a drug compound that lowers blood pressure and prevents heart and kidney damage in rats with persistent hypertension.

The University of Florida researchers said their findings could lead to a new class of antihypertensive drugs designed to address two major problems associated with cardiovascular disease: high blood pressure and the tissue damage associated with it, known as fibrosis.

"When people have heart attacks (or suffer from hypertension) the blood vessels get more rigid," said Assistant Professor David Ostrov. "We discovered a compound that reverses the fibrosis that makes the blood vessels more rigid."

He said the discovery, in itself, is significant because no one has ever specifically identified a compound that enhances the activity of an enzyme -- in this case ACE2 -- using a rational structure-based approach.

"In other words, no one has ever done this before on purpose," he said. "People have discovered molecules that enhance the activity of enzymes by trial and error but no group has ever done it in a specifically pointed way like this."

Additional research, he said, will continue to explore the compound's effectiveness in animals and humans.

The findings appear in the journal Hypertension.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.