Rice for hypertensive patients
A spoonful of rice a day – instead of pills "for pressure"
The first transgenic plants were created back in the early 1980s, and today many genetically engineered varieties resistant to pests and cold, fast-growing and highly productive crops and unusual ornamental plants, including the popular petunia, are grown in the world. But transgenic plants can also be used for other purposes – as "bioreactors" for the production of medicinal compounds. One of the first examples is transgenic rice, the grains of which accumulate natural substances that lower blood pressure.
Article by Qian et al. Hypotensive Activity of Transgenic Rice Seed Accumulating Multiple Antihypertensive Peptides is published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
High blood pressure (hypertension) is a major risk factor for many cardiovascular diseases and stroke. At the same time, over the past 40 years, the number of hypertensive patients in the world has doubled.
A special hormonal angiotensin system regulates blood pressure and blood volume in the body. One of its main components is the peptide hormone angiotensin, which causes narrowing of blood vessels and, accordingly, an increase in blood pressure. This hormone is synthesized in the liver and has two forms, differing in different biological activity. The conversion of inactive angiotensin I into active angiotensin II catalyzes the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE).
ACE is a popular molecular target for hypertension medications: today, a number of synthetic inhibitors that block the transition of angiotensin to the active form are used for its treatment, including captopril, enalapril, zofenapril, etc. However, these drugs often cause side effects – from coughing, headaches and skin rashes to more serious ones, such as kidney failure.
There are also natural ACE inhibitors, which are found in conventional foods (milk, eggs, fish, meat), as well as in some plants. They do not cause such side effects as synthetic ones, but their production from natural raw materials is economically unprofitable. And here the latest molecular genetic methods come to the rescue, allowing to modify the genome of plants much faster and more efficiently than with the help of conventional breeding.
Rice is one of the most popular foods in the world. Proteins that inhibit ACE have already been found in its grains, and recently Chinese scientists decided to use genetic engineering methods to obtain a plant whose grains will contain a mixture of several such compounds in high concentration. To do this, they inserted a new gene into the rice genome, encoding nine ACE-inhibiting peptides at once and another one that dilates blood vessels.
The protein fraction from the grains of the transgenic plant was tested on SHR rats with hereditary spontaneous hypertension. Already two hours after the injection, the blood pressure in the animals decreased. Rice flour, which was given to rats daily for five weeks, was also effective. In this case, the hypotensive effect persisted in the animals for another week after the end of the experiment.
The consumption of modified rice had no effect on the blood pressure of ordinary rats. In addition, scientists have not detected any negative side effects in all experimental animals.
If the effective dose of antihypertensive compounds from transgenic rice for humans turns out to be comparable to that for rats, then, adjusted for body weight, it will be enough for an adult to eat about half a tablespoon of rice grains daily for the prevention and treatment of hypertension. And at the same time without any side effects! In addition, from the point of view of production, it is not so difficult to supply a huge army of hypertensive patients with such a "medicine", which today has more than 1.1 billion people.
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