About one in five people with high blood pressure that requires treatment does not respond to the medication. This could be caused by intestinal bacteria that break down the drugs before they can take effect. The researchers reported at the annual meeting of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics in Philadelphia.
A certain intestinal bacterium could contribute to therapy-resistant high blood pressure: After it had been shown that rats with high blood pressure responded differently to the antihypertensive drug quinapril depending on the amount of their intestinal bacteria, researchers at the University of Toledo analyzed the composition of the intestinal flora. It turned out that bacteria called Coprococcus comes could be the reason for the lower effectiveness: they are able to break down quinapril. When the researchers gave the rats these bacteria and quinapril at the same time, the drug was less effective than alone.
“We are still at an early stage of analyzing interactions between intestinal bacteria and antihypertensive drugs,” said Prof. Dr. Tao Yang. “However, our results indicate that one and the same drug may not be suitable for everyone, since each person has a unique composition of the intestinal flora.” B. could include probiotics or antibiotics.
ACE inhibitors are an important class of drugs used to treat high blood pressure. The researchers are now conducting similar experiments with other types of gut bacteria and additional blood pressure drugs to further study how gut flora alters the drugs’ effectiveness.