When will high blood pressure preventive shots be available?

As of mid-2024, there are no hypertension vaccinations officially approved for marketing worldwide. Most of the related products are in the pre-clinical or clinical trial stage. It will take 3 to 5 years at the earliest to be available to the general public for vaccination. In some directions with slower R&D progress, it may even take more than 10 years.

Oh, by the way, I need to clarify a misunderstanding here. Most of the "high blood pressure vaccinations" we talk about now are actually therapeutic vaccines, not preventive vaccines like the hepatitis B vaccine we got when we were young. The former is for patients who have been diagnosed with essential hypertension. One injection can prevent them from taking antihypertensive drugs for 3 to 12 months. The latter is for healthy people. The research and development of the latter is still in a very early stage, and there is basically no breakthrough. You don't have to look forward to it for the time being.

The hypertension vaccine against angiotensin Ⅱ developed by the cardiovascular team of Wuhan Union Medical College Hospital two years ago has been on the hot search. At that time, it was able to maintain stable blood pressure for 6 months with one injection in mouse experiments. Now it has entered Phase I clinical trials, mainly testing safety. If the subsequent Phase II and Phase III clinical trials can successfully obtain qualified data, it may be the earliest therapeutic vaccine for hypertension in China. There are also several teams working on the same type of products in Switzerland and the United States. However, several of them have been stuck in phase II clinical trials for a long time due to excessive immune responses in a small number of subjects. It is hard to say whether they can be launched in the future.

The industry’s expectations for this type of vaccine are actually not that unified. A doctor around me who has been managing chronic diseases for more than ten years is particularly looking forward to the launch of this product. Many elderly patients in his care simply cannot remember to take antihypertensive drugs. Some find it troublesome to secretly reduce the medication, and have to be hospitalized several times a year due to hypertensive crises. If there is a vaccine that can be administered once every six months, most of the compliance problems can be solved directly. However, some friends who do basic research feel that most of the current therapeutic hypertension vaccines only target angiotensin II. However, the pathogenesis of primary hypertension is too complicated. Some people are due to excessive sodium intake, some are sympathetic nervous excitement, and some are due to the superposition of multiple factors. A single-target vaccine may be useless for at least 30% of patients with hypertension. If it is promoted blindly, it will delay the routine treatment of patients.

To tell the truth, last month I met a family member of a patient who came to the outpatient clinic for questioning. He said that someone gave his parents a 30,000-dollar "imported high blood pressure vaccine" that can cure high blood pressure without taking medicine. In fact, it is all a scam. All high blood pressure vaccines are still in the experimental stage and have not yet been marketed. If they are really approved, the State Food and Drug Administration will definitely make an announcement as soon as possible, and the community health service center will also notify simultaneously. They will not be sold privately, so don't be fooled.