Published : 08 Nov 2026, 10:34 PM
Updated : 08 Nov 2026, 10:34 PM
A drug developed to lower high blood pressure may offer benefits long after patients stop taking it, with some potentially able to come off all hypertension medication, according to a study reported by the Guardian.
The drug, baxdrostat, targets primary aldosteronism, a common cause of high blood pressure in which the adrenal glands produce excessive amounts of the hormone aldosterone.
Patients who took daily doses of baxdrostat for six to 12 months saw improvements that lasted for up to two years after treatment ended.
Nearly a quarter of those in a small study eventually had normal blood pressure without needing further medication, The Guardian reported.
“It’s very exciting to see,” Prof Morris Brown, a hypertension specialist at Queen Mary University of London who led the research, was quoted as saying.
“Just under a quarter of the patients came off all treatment and had completely normal blood pressure,” he added.
More than a billion people worldwide have hypertension, including over 12 million in the UK. Primary aldosteronism accounts for an estimated 5 to 10 percent of cases and is often caused by small nodules or benign tumours on the adrenal glands.
The usual treatment is surgery to remove the affected adrenal gland, although other factors can contribute to high blood pressure and prevent a complete recovery.
Baxdrostat belongs to a class of medicines known as aldosterone synthase inhibitors, which suppress the production of the hormone.
It was approved in the US earlier this year for patients whose hypertension is not controlled by existing drugs. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence is assessing the drug for possible NHS use next year.
The findings came from a small study involving 14 patients whose blood pressure improved during an initial three-month trial, cited per the report.
They continued taking the drug for six to 12 months before stopping. Follow-up checks found that the improvements had persisted for up to two years, the Guardian said. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers cautioned that it was too early to call the drug a cure. Mason Freeman of Harvard University said a larger trial was under way to assess how lasting and widespread the effects are.
“If this effect is common and very persistent then the approach to diagnosing and treating these patients is likely to dramatically change,” he said.
Brown suspects baxdrostat may destroy the cells producing excess aldosterone by triggering a rise in reactive oxygen species when it suppresses the hormone.
“Those oxygen radicals are killing the cells and they disappear,” Brown said, adding that his team was testing the theory in laboratory experiments.
