April 9, 2003 -- (San Diego, CA) Nearly two years ago, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported that women who took estrogen for ten years or more after menopause were twice as likely to die of ovarian cancer as nonusers. For the 20 million Americans who used estrogen alone or in combination therapy, the news reports have been devastating.

Many women immediately stopped taking the hormone. But if they were post-menopausal and hypertensive (had high blood pressure), they were abandoning a therapy that appeared to be useful in lowering blood pressure.

Now, a new research study finds that a diet moderately high in grape seed extract can blunt salt (sodium chloride)-sensitive hypertension to about the same extent as treatment with either plant estrogens or 17-estradiol. This suggests that mechanisms other than the estrogen receptor activation actually provides the beneficial effects of estrogen therapy and that grape seed extract may be a useful supplement to blunt hypertension and other cardiovascular symptoms in postmenopausal women.

Background

These findings may be significant for the increasing number of women entering middle age. It is estimated that between 40 and 50 million Americans have hypertension, which is indicated when an individual's systolic or diastolic blood pressure is maintained above 140 mm Hg or 90 mm Hg, respectively. This debilitating medical disorder becomes more prevalent with increasing age, and at all ages and in both sexes it afflicts African-Americans more often than whites. Men with hypertension outnumber women with hypertension during young adulthood and early middle age, but hypertension rapidly increases in women after the age of menopause, and they soon outnumber men with hypertension.

Hypertension is strongly, continuously, and independently related to coronary artery disease (CAD), stroke, renal disease, and all-cause mortality. Past research has fou
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Contact: Donna Krupa
djkrupa1@aol.com
703-967-2751
American Physiological Society
9-Apr-2003

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