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SCHLIEREN, Switzerland—At the recent European Meeting on Hypertension, researchers at Cytos Biotechnology presented the findings of a Phase II trial of their vaccine candidate in 72 patients with mild to moderate hypertension. They found the vaccine showed a particularly strong response in the ever-dangerous early morning hours, with blood pressure changes of -25/-13 mm Hg over placebo.
Unlike typical drug therapies, which show large variations of serum drug levels throughout the day, vaccine-induced anti-angiotensin II antibody levels declined much more slowly, with a half-life of four months.
“An intervention with a different pharmacokinetic profile like the vaccine approach, which avoids the daily peaks and troughs in drug levels as well as the reactive rise of plasma renin, may therefore achieve a better protection from adverse cardiovascular events in early morning hours,” says Dr. Philipp Muller, Cytos’s EVP of clinical development. “This is crucial if one considers that myocardial infarction is three times more likely to begin in the morning than during night time and that morning hypertension has been identified as the strongest independent risk factor for stroke.”
Muller also suggests that the vaccine will improve patient compliance to treatment because it removes the onus of therapy administration from the patient.
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