Research Into Blood Pressure Is Being Made

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 15, Issue 94, 11 September 1950, Page 5

Research Into Blood Pressure Is Being Made

More intensive research into high blood pressure, one of the commonest disorders endangering life in New Zealand, is to be undertaken by the Medical Research Council. The Minister of Health, Mr Watts, said that research into blood pressure had been going on for several years, and recent tests with a substance known as hexamethonium iodide has indicated that it might be a promising line of treatment. Additional study and proper clinical trials of the substance were still required. Other lines of research mentioned by Mr Watts included the extension of research into virus diseases, and experiments in the use of radio-active iodine in thyroid diseases.

The council, said Mr Watts, had done valuable work since its establishment in 1938, and would now be in a better position to extend its activities ’as a result of the passing of the Medical Research Council Act.

He described high blood pressure as an important subject for research in New Zealand as it was frequently the underlying cause of deaths attributed to kidney disease, heart disease and strokes.

Dr F. H. Smirk, Professor of Medicine at the Otago Medical School and chairman of the council’s clinical medicine committee, had, with his co-workers, been studying high blood pressure for several years. Recently the committee had made tests with hexamethonium iodide to find whether it could be used for treating the complaints. Nothing had been done with this substance before except in Dunedin, though work had been done overseas with‘related substances.

The next stage in the investigation? would be the establishment of a special clinic at which a selected number of people ‘-would be treated.

Virus Research “Numerous cases of presumptive virus infection, both sporadic and epidemic, are known to occur in New Zealand, and virus research is important to this country,” said Mr Watts. The council’s microbiology committee had done some virus research, but the work would be extended to provide adequate diagnostic and research services.

Several ordinary diseases were caused by bacterial infection but others, like measles and chicken pox, where no particular organism could be isolated, were virus diseases. Common infectious virus diseases would not be investigated at the virus research laboratory, which would be established at the Otago Medical School. The. object was to deal with virus problems peculiar to New Zealand, which cropped up from time to time.