Yale joins hypertension network

Two School of Medicine scientists will join colleagues in Switzerland, France and Mexico in a collaboration to pinpoint the role of the kidney in high blood pressure. The Transatlantic Network on Hypertension—Renal Salt Handling in the Control of Blood Pressure has received a five-year, $6 million grant from the Leducq Foundation, a Paris-based organization that supports international research collaborations in cardiovascular disease.

The exact causes of hypertension, one of the most important risk factors for such cardiovascular diseases as stroke and heart attack, remain unknown. The kidney’s management of salt levels, however, plays a major role.

Leading the Yale team are Steven C. Hebert, M.D., the C.N.H. Long Professor and chair of cellular and molecular physiology, and Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D., Sterling Professor and chair of genetics.

“The Leducq program,” Lifton said, “allows us to bring together a ‘dream team’ of investigators from around the world with diverse expertise in physiology, genetics and clinical investigation to combine forces to tackle this important medical problem.”