What happened
- The Guardian reported on November 8, 2026 on a study suggesting the drug baxdrostat reverses a common cause of high blood pressure for years, even after it is stopped.
- Patients took daily pills for six to 12 months and blood pressure improved during treatment. To the doctors’ surprise, the benefit persisted up to two years later.
- The study leader, Morris Brown of Queen Mary University of London, said “just under a quarter of the patients came off all treatment and had completely normal blood pressure.”
- Details were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Why it matters
More than a billion people have hypertension worldwide, including more than 12 million in the UK. In 5% to 10% of cases the cause is nodules or benign tumors on the adrenal glands that overproduce aldosterone, a hormone that makes the kidneys retain salt and raises pressure.
The usual treatment for that primary aldosteronism is removing the affected gland, but surgery does not always cure because other factors contribute. If a drug can deliver sustained remissions, it would change the diagnosis and treatment path.
The number
14 patients. That is the size of the small study where the effect was seen: people whose pressure improved markedly in a three-month trial. They kept taking the drug for six to 12 months, stopped, and up to two years later pressure remained lower. With a sample that small, one cannot yet speak of a cure.
Context
Baxdrostat is an aldosterone synthase inhibitor, which suppresses the pressure-raising hormone. It was approved in the US this year for hypertension not controlled by other drugs. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) is assessing it, and it could reach the NHS next year.
Mason Freeman, a Harvard professor involved, said it is too early to say some patients were cured and that a larger trial is under way. If the effect is common and persistent, “everyone could be treated with the inhibitor on initial suspicion” and avoid invasive procedures and surgery if they respond well.
Brown suspects a mechanism. Twenty years ago an experiment in mice showed that deleting the gene needed to make aldosterone caused the hormone-producing cells to disappear. He believes that by suppressing the hormone the drug causes a surge of reactive oxygen species that would selectively destroy those cells. It is a hypothesis that, he says, can be tested.
At Mamífero we have followed cardiovascular trials. Guiding statins with a coronary scan gave the same events with fewer prescriptions, three daily servings of whole-fat dairy did not harm cholesterol, two or three cups of coffee were linked to less dementia and the high-dose flu vaccine was linked to fewer Alzheimer’s cases.
What’s next
- A larger trial will try to confirm whether the effect is common and lasting.
- Nice will decide whether the drug reaches the NHS next year.
- The proposed mechanism, selective destruction of cells by reactive oxygen species, remains to be tested.
Bottom line
With 14 patients a cure cannot be declared, but the persistence of the effect after stopping the drug is unusual in hypertension. The answer will come from the larger trial and longer follow-up.
Sources
- The Guardian, “New drug could be cure for common cause of high blood pressure”, November 8, 2026, link. The New England Journal of Medicine paper was not consulted directly.
- Cover image: Albarubescens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Edited by Rodrigo Cornejo. How we select and verify: who writes these notes.
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