High-sugar diet increases men's blood pressure

A HIGH-fructose diet raises blood pressure in men, while a drug used to treat gout seems to protect against the blood pressure increase, according to research reported at the American Heart Association’s 63rd High Blood Pressure Research Conference.
“This is the first evidence of a role of fructose in raising blood pressure and a role for lowering uric acid to protect against that blood pressure increase in people,” said Richard Johnson, M.D., co-author of the study and professor and head of the division of Renal Diseases and Hypertension at the University of Colorado-Denver medical campus in Aurora, Colo.
In the study, excessive fructose consumption seemed to increase new onset of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of risk factors associated with the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. On the other hand, the gout drug seemed to halt it - most likely by lowering uric acid, which affects blood pressure.
Fructose, one of several dietary sugars, makes up about half of all the sugar molecules in table sugar and in high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener often used in packaged products because it’s relatively cheap and has a long shelf life. Glucose makes up the other half. Fructose is the only common sugar known to increase uric acid levels.
Patients with high blood pressure, diabetes and kidney disease often have high uric acid levels and gout. But all the ways in which those conditions might contribute to the development or worsening of the others isn’t completely understood, Johnson said.
Johnson and co-author Santos Perez-Pozo, M.D., a nephrologist at Mateo Orfila Hospital in Minorca, Spain who led the study, evaluated 74 adult men, average age 51, who consumed a diet that included 200 grams (g) of fructose per day in addition to their regular diet. The amount is much higher than the estimated U.S. daily intake of 50 g to 70 g of fructose consumed by most U.S. adults. Half of the men were randomly assigned to get the gout drug allopurinol and the other half acted as controls.
After only two weeks on the diet, the high-fructose plus placebo group experienced significant average blood pressure increases of about 6 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) in systolic blood pressure (the pressure when the heart beats) and about a 3 mm Hg rise in diastolic blood pressure (the pressure between heartbeats). They were measured with strap-on monitors that record blood pressure periodically around the clock.
In contrast, men on the high-fructose diet plus allopurinol had significantly lower uric acid levels and virtually no increase in systolic blood pressure (only 1 mm Hg). The blood pressure levels of most of the men returned to normal within two months of the study’s conclusion when the participants returned to their normal dietary intake, Johnson said. Link...