For patients with uncontrolled hypertension, a new tool developed by a pharmacist and supported by the American Heart Association's Heart 360 website, to enable self monitoring of blood pressure has shown great results for patients, a study opines. More than 350 patients with uncontrolled hypertension, ages 18 to 85 years, and with Internet access were randomised to the Usual Care (UC) group or the HBPM group. All patients had their blood pressure measured in the c...

Receiving an organ low in weight in relation to the recipient's body weight increases kidney transplant recipients risk of complications and transplant failure, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the IJournal of the American Society Nephrology/I (IJASN/I). The results suggest that compatibility between a donated kidney's weight and the weight of the recipient could improve the success of transplantation.

Gene therapy has been found to have positive effects in rat models of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), according to researchers at the University of Adelaide in Australia. PAH is a life-threatening disease in which pressure in the blood vessels of the lungs increases, causing a back-pressure strain on the heart. In inherited forms of the disease, PAH is caused by a mutation in a receptor called bone morphogenetic protein receptor, type II (BMPR2). Even in some non-inherited fo...

A new study by researchers from the University of Dusiburg-Essen in Germany has shown that people who live in urban areas where particulate air pollution is high tend to have higher blood pressure than those who live in less polluted areas. The researchers used data from the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study, an ongoing population-based cohort study of almost 5,000 individuals that focuses on the development of heart disease. They analysed the effects of air pollu...

Anti-inflammatory drugs can block kidney damage in hypertension patients, Medical College of Georgia researchers report. Treating hypertensive rats with the broad-acting anti-inflammatory drug pentosan polysulfate preserves the kidney's ability to regulate pressure placed on tiny filters calledIglomeruli/I, they report in the May issue ofIAmerican Journal of Physiology -- Renal Physiology/I. A million of these fragile structures are responsible for filtering the body's total plas...

Individuals who have fluctuating blood pressure in addition to high blood pressure are at a higher risk for cerebrovascular diseases, according to a new study. The study appears in the May issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Cerebrovascular disease, which includes stroke and other disorders affecting blood vessels in the brain, is associated with cognitive decline and disability in older adults, according to background inform...

Parent's blood pressure, waist and hip circumference are the keys to identifying masked hypertension in their kids, says a new study. According to data unveiled at the American Society of Hypertension Inc.'s 25th Annual Scientific Meeting and Exposition (ASH 2010), children and adolescents who have parents with hypertension and larger waist (WC) and hip circumference (HC) should be evaluated for hypertension even if they exhibit normal blood pressure (BP...

A new HIV model that suggests killer T cells could come in handy for an AIDS vaccine has been developed by Chinese scientists. Physicists and biologists from Xiamen University have been able to incorporate random patterns in the virus' mutation, and the way the virus responds to antibodies, into their model. They have found that the new model, and the projections made by the new model for development of disease, mirror real-life, clinical behaviour of the vi...

The genome of the spontaneously hypertensive rat has been sequenced by scientists and could help understand causes of the disease in humans. The spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR) strain is the most widely studied animal model of human hypertension. Research on this strain has identified many genomic regions that likely harbour genetic variants that are responsible for the hypertension phenotype, however without a complete sequence of the hyper...

The financial crisis appears to have hurt everybody as one of the biggest global sources of funds to treat AIDS and other killer diseases in poor countries is facing a crucial challenge to find cash. The Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, which claims to have saved an estimated 4.9 million lives since 2005, needs to mobilise 13 to 20 billion dollars (10-15 billion euros) for 2011-2013 this year from state and private donors. "The challenge is the resource...