The traditional treatment of hypertension can be radically revised. This is evidenced by recent studies of this disease.
For many years, hypertension has been considered a relatively predictable disease associated mainly with salt intake, stress, age and genetics. However, recent research is expanding the understanding of hypertension in three key areas: genetics, the gut microbiome, and the interaction of the microbiome with the circulatory system and metabolism. This line of research goes beyond traditional risk factors and opens the way to a more accurate understanding of this disease.
In particular, in 2024, a group of researchers from the National Institutes of Health published in the journal Nature Genetics the results of one of the largest genetic studies of blood pressure, including data from more than a million people. They identified more than 100 new regions of the genome associated with the regulation of blood pressure.
"Our study helps to explain a much larger proportion of differences in blood pressure between two people than previously thought," the authors of the study emphasized.
Epigenetic mechanisms and the interaction of genes and the environment complement the genetic picture. As noted in a review published in the journal Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, "hypertension is a hereditary disease, but in the vast majority of cases it is polygenic — with many variants that may not cause the disease by themselves, but in combination with other factors can diagnose it."
The gut microbiome is also attracting more and more attention. As reported in the article "Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine", "a decrease in the number and diversity of the intestinal microbiota, as well as an increase in the ratio of Firmicutes/Bacteroidetes correlate with an increased risk of hypertension." One of the latest studies linking the microbiome to the blood pressure profile is an analysis published in 2025 in the journal Communications Medicine. It was attended by 3695 people who underwent 24-hour blood pressure monitoring and microbiome analysis. The results showed that "a greater diversity of the gut microbiome was negatively correlated with diastolic variability in blood pressure."
In the light of these data, hypertension is no longer perceived as a homogeneous vascular disease or a consequence of aging. Now it is a complex network of interactions: genetics, metabolism, microbiome, hormonal and immune systems, environmental factors and lifestyle. This means that instead of a single universal therapy, the future may be for individualized diagnosis and potential modulation of the microbiome.