Cheap Blood Pressure Drug Could Treat Multiple Sclerosis
Scientists believe they have discovered a link between high blood pressure and multiple sclerosis.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, neurology professor Lawrence Steinman of the Stanford University School of Medicine, said that the findings could prove that the inexpensive blood pressure drug lisinopril could be used to treat multiple sclerosis as well.
Lisinopril is marketed by pharmaceutical company Merck under the name Prinivil.
Steinman’s team studied the drug’s impact on brain lesions in laboratory mice. The lesions were similar to those found in humans with multiple sclerosis, a chronic and occasionally lethal autoimmune disease.
"We were able to show that all the targets for lisinopril are there and ready for therapeutic manipulation in the multiple-sclerosis lesions of human patients,” said Steinman.
“Without that, this would be just another intriguing paper about what’s possible in the mouse."
"Strikingly, if it was given after the mice developed full-blown symptoms, lisinopril reversed their paralysis," researchers said.
Steinman’s study of a hormone called angiotensin is key to the recent report’s findings. Angiotensin is a hormone that causes blood vessels to constrict in response to certain stimuli.
"That raises your blood pressure so when you stand up to get out of a chair, you don’t fall down and faint," said Steinman.
However, angiotensin overactivity is known to cause hypertension. Therefore, lisinopril is used to control blood pressure by blocking the enzyme that converts angiotensin’s precursor into the active hormone. The drug also appears to have certain anti-inflammatory properties, researchers noted.
Steinman tested the relationship between MS and angiotensin by examining multiple-sclerosis lesions of brain samples. They found higher than normal levels of both the angiotensin receptor and the angiotensin-producing enzyme blocked by lisinopril.
"If multiple sclerosis patients can be treated with lisinopril at something like one percent of the price of treatment with Tysabri, then far more patients will receive adequate therapy, at a substantially lower cost to those paying for it," Marc Feldmann, an Imperial College London immunologist, told AFP.
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