Stimulating different, very specific parts of the brain potentially offers a cure for sufferers of high blood pressure that does not depend on taking drugs.

The team of neurosurgeons and physiologists at Oxford University and Imperial College London who made the discovery describe their work in a paper published in Neuroreport.

Cure Without Drugs?

Deep brain stimulation -- placing very thin electrodes onto exact locations in the brain -- already is used to relieve pain or to help Parkinson's sufferers to move better.

Fifteen patients having the operation to implant electrodes for pain control agreed to take part in a study to see whether stimulating another location in the brain could alter blood pressure.

The researchers found that blood pressure could be raised or lowered precisely by stimulating different, very specific parts of the brain. This potentially offers a cure for sufferers of high blood pressure that does not depend on taking drugs long-term.

Because the electrodes can be switched on and off, another condition that potentially could be treated using this method is "postural hypotension," which causes a patient's blood pressure to fall uncontrollably upon standing up.

Nanotechnology Approach?

"Obviously, as this is brain surgery, we have to proceed with great caution," says Mr. Alexander Green, lead author of the paper.

"It would initially only be warranted in those patients for whom drug treatments just aren’t working," he suggests.

"However, other research groups are working on less invasive methods of stimulating exact locations in the brain -- for example using nanotechnology -- and if this becomes available, then the treatment would be attractive to a much larger number of people," Mr. Green notes.