BLOOD PRESSURE TREATMENT

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26856, 8 October 1952, Page 10

BLOOD PRESSURE TREATMENT

DUNEDIN_RESEARCH INTEREST IN BRITAIN AND U.S. Research into the treatment of high blood pressure, which has been carried out at the Otago Medical School for several years, has been followed up in Britain and the United States, according to Dr. F. N. Fastier, the newlyappointed senior lecturer in pharmacology at the school. When he returned to Dunedin recently, Dr. Fastier said that American research workers had combined a hexamethonium compound, which has been used to treat New Zealand cases of blood pressure, with another drug, apresoline, and the results were promising. In 1950 the then Minister of Health (Mr J. T. Watts) announced that the Medical Research Council had undertaken more intensive research into high blood pressure, which he described as one of the commonest disorders which endangered life in New Zealand. Frequently, he said, it was the underlying cause of deaths attributed to kidney disease, heart disease, and strokes. Dr. F. H. Smirk, professor of medicine at the Medical School, who is chairman of the Medical Research Council’s clinical medicine committee, and his co-workers had been studying high blood pressure for some years. Early in 1950, they made tests with hexamethonium iodide to find if it could be used for treating the complaint. Nothing had previously been done with this substance except in Dunedin, although work had been done overseas with related substances. A special clinic was established in Dunedin for treating a selected number of people suffering from high blood pressure. In a report to the Medical Research Council last year, Dr. Smirk stated that injections of hexamethonium bromide had been found in the great majority of cases to lessen or remove entirely such of the distressing manifestations of hypertension as were reversible. In two years, more than 80 patients had benefited from carefully supervised treatment. There had been a substantial decrease in the death rate among treated patients, as opposed to untreated.