Brazilians develop pioneering drug to treat hypertension in pregnant women

Preeclampsia, a disease specific to pregnancy, when it evolves to severe form, eclampsia, is responsible for about 40% of deaths of women from pregnancy and childbirth in Brazil. Despite the high incidence in the population, the causes of these diseases have not been well established and there are no drugs on the market targeted specifically to their treatment because traditional remedies may endanger fetal development.

But this difficulty can be overcome in the treatment soon because a novel antihypertensive drug for the period of pregnancy developed by a group of Brazilian researchers from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and Union Chemical Company has passed the first phase of testing clinicians.

We imagine the completion of all clinical trials in two years and a conservative forecast, the drug could be launched within five years. This period will depend on the part of regulatory bodies, said Dr. Robson Augusto Souza dos Santos, professor at the Institute of Biological Sciences (ICB) UFMG. Santos also coordinates the National Institute of Science and Technology in Nanobiofarmacêutica (INCT-Nanobiofar), headquartered at the same university.

The current drugs to control blood pressure act on the mechanism of vasoconstrictor renin-angiotensin system and are not endogenous, ie produced by the body itself, but molecules made in the laboratory. For this reason, they have side effects, explains the coordinator INCT-Nanobiofar. The drug that we are developing this problem does not provide for peptide itself be synthesized by biochemical means, but with the same composition as existing in the human body. According to Santos, the drug, when finalized, may also be used to treat hypertension general. Previous studies showed that the drug has reduced the blood pressure of hypertensive rats. The next step will be to test in humans, says

<i> information Fapesp <i>

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