BLOOD PRESSURE CONTROL

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27441, 30 August 1954, Page 9

BLOOD PRESSURE CONTROL

NEW ZEALAND’S LEAD IN RESEARCH

NEW DRUGS GIVE RELIEF OF SYMPTOMS

(From Our Own Reporter) NELSON, August 28. Within the last 10 years several drugs have been discovered, which can be used with comparative safety over long periods, for lowering blood pressure of patients with essential hypertension (blood pressure) which kills more New Zealanders than, does any other disease, cancer included, said Dr. F. N. Fastier, of the Department of Medicine at the Otago University Medical School when presenting a paper at the combined conference in Nelson of the New Zealand Institute of Chemistry and the New Zealand Section of the Royal Institute of Chemistry. The most important of these drugs were certain quaternary ammonium compounds, such as hexamethonium, and a few alkaloids of complex structure, notably reserpine. Dr. Fastier said these drugs afforded most patients considerable symptomatic relief, but whether thej* could help hypertensitive patients in the long run, would not be known until such time as the drugs had been used over a much

longer period. “I think that they can be regarded as milestones on the way to satisfactory therapy just as were the first arsenicals and sulphonamides, he said. “Some 300 compounds of different types have been investigated recently at the Otago University Medical School by a team of research workers headed by Professor F. H. Smirk. Most of the compounds were prepared locally, others were obtained from English and American drug companies,” Dr. Fastier said. A few of the compounds had been of sufficient interest to merit clinical trial. The best was a drug synthesised originally by chemists of the British firm of May and Baker, and it was undoubtedly an improvement on hexamethonium.” Hexamethonium has now been taken regularly, for several years, by hundreds of New Zealanders with blood pressure. Its use and growing popularity in other countries is due partly to investigations performed in New Zealand during the last few years, said Dr. Fastier.