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RECENT RESEARCH Clinical Trial Investigates If Denervating Kidney Nerves Reduces Blood Pressure Can high blood pressure be safely reduced and controlled by "disconnect- ing" nerves in the kidneys? That is a question that a new clinical study called Symplicity HTN-3 at University Hospitals Case Medical Center (UHCMC) hopes to answer. The study will enroll people who have resistant hypertension, meaning that their blood pressure remains extremely high despite taking three or more medica- tions. UH is a clinical site for the five-year national study funded by Medtronic and is one of 90 sites in the nation that will enroll more than 500 people with high blood pressure resistant to medical therapy into the study. It will involve a novel multi-disciplinary approach to hypertension treatment using cardiac and kidney specialists. In the Symplicity HTN-3 clinical study, research subjects will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: One-third will continue the best available medical treatment and two-thirds will combine the best available medical treatment with a procedure where participants will have the nerves in their renal arteries disrupted with radio frequency energy that generates heat. The process is called renal denervation. An earlier study (Symplicity HTN-2), performed in Europe and Australia, found that patients who underwent renal dener- vation experienced a nearly 30mmHg of systolic blood pressure reduction compared to treatment with medications alone. Symplicity HTN-3 will be a much larger trial conducted entirely in the U.S. The denervation of the kidney arter- ies will be performed in the cardiac catheterization lab. The procedure itself takes about 45 minutes and involves using low level radio frequency energy to heat the tissue in the renal artery just enough to eliminate the nerves without hurting the arterial wall. Patients generally experience minimal discomfort during the procedure. So far, long-term side effects have been minimal in the patients treated in Europe and Australia. The study is current ly enrol l- ing patients 18 to 80 years old. For more information about enrollment criteria, visit ClinicalTrials.gov, study identifier: NCT01418261. Potential Drug Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease A compound developed to treat neu- ropathic pain has shown potential as an innovative treatment for Alzheimer's disease, according to a study by research- ers at Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute and Anesthesiology Institute. "Cleveland Clinic dedicated two years of research into the examination of this compound and our findings show it could represent a novel therapeutic target in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease," said Mohamed Naguib, M.D., Professor of Anesthesiology, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. "Development of this compound as a potential drug for Alzheimer's would take many more years, but this is a promising finding worthy of further investigation." In a study published online in the Neurobiology of Aging, the compound MDA7 induced beneficial immune responses that limited the develop- ment of Alzheimer's disease. Treatment with the compound restored cognition, memory and synaptic plasticity — a key neurological foundation of learning and memory — in an animal model. Neuroinflammation is an important mechanism involved in the progression of Alzheimer's disease. The MDA7 compound has anti-inf lammatory properties that act on the CB2 recep- tor — one of the two cannabinoid receptors in the body — but without the negative side effects normally seen with cannabinoid compounds. Dr. Naguib is named on two pat- ent applications on CB2 modulators submitted by the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. s 44 | Cleveland/Akron/Canton MD NEWS s MDNEWS.COM s NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2012