Cheap cure for thousands with high blood pressure: Simple test could save thousands from life-threatening problems each year

A cheap, simple blood test could save thousands from life-threatening blood pressure problems each year, scientists claimed last night.
Research from Cambridge University suggests at least one in ten of Britain’s 16million patients with high blood pressure could be cured if diagnosed early.
The study centres around a form of the condition caused by tiny, benign tumours of the adrenal gland, a hormone-producing organ on top of the kidney.
Although it is particularly dangerous, it can be detected with a £15 test and wiped out by removing the tumours with keyhole surgery.

This would remove the need for life-long blood pressure drugs and would also greatly reduce the odds of heart attacks, strokes and other potentially fatal conditions.
The treatment works best for the under-forties, and up to 10,000 men and women in their twenties and thirties could benefit each year.
The British Heart Foundation described the research as ‘an exciting development’, but stressed that early diagnosis was essential.
High blood pressure affects a third of adults and trebles the risk of heart attacks and strokes.
Known as the silent killer, because the symptoms often go unnoticed until it is too late, it is the single biggest cause of death worldwide.
The type caused by benign tumours of the adrenal gland is especially worrying.

Patients are five times more likely to have a heart attack than those whose blood pressure has been increased by other factors, such as smoking or stress. Doctors have long known that the tumours increase blood pressure, but it was thought only a relatively small number of patients were affected.
However, the Cambridge study, published in the journal Nature Genetics, suggests these adrenal tumours are responsible for one in ten cases of the condition.
Researchers took enhanced scans of men and women with high blood pressure to detect the tumours, which can be just 3mm across.
They then removed the growths and analysed their DNA

This showed the vast majority to have a mutation that increases production of aldosterone, a hormone that raises blood pressure.

Professor Morris Brown, of the team that carried out the study, said: ‘We think these could be present in up to 10 per cent of all people with high blood pressure.

‘These have to be diagnosed in young people if removing them is going to completely remove the high blood pressure and save them from a lifetime of drugs.’

The tumours can be detected by an ‘exquisitely accurate’ and inexpensive blood test and then removed. Patients typically need two days in hospital for keyhole surgery and a fortnight off work.

The operation works best in the under-forties, when removing the tumours should mean blood pressure returns to normal.

As the tumours do not grow back, the patient is cured and no longer needs medication.

At the moment, this operation is done only about 300 times year.

Professor Brown, an honorary consultant physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, estimates the number who could benefit is around 30 times higher.