Eleanor Davies, Scott MacKenzie and John McClure

Professor Eleanor Davies along with Dr Scott Mackenzie and Dr John McClure have been awarded €1.24m from UKRI/Horizon Europe as part of a large European study focused on improving the diagnosis and management of Hypertension.

The €15m HT-ADVANCE project, which has been funded by the EU, UKRI and the Swiss Government, brings together several European partners, including UK Universities of Glasgow, Dundee and Birmingham. The study will last six years and aims to both streamline the diagnosis of patients with curable forms of Hypertension, and also optimise the care of other patients with high blood pressure by predicting their likely response to treatment.

The Researchers will measure multiple sets of hypertension patients genetic, genomic and metabolomic characteristics to establish key biomarkers for specific forms of endocrine hypertension, as well as to monitor patient responses to blood pressure treatment.

HT-ADVANCE will include three separate but complementary clinical trials that will use artificial intelligence machine learning analysis of the omics datasets to generate meaningful diagnostic and therapeutic response prediction tools for clinicians.

Arterial hypertension affects 10-50% of the population over the age of 40 and is the prime risk factor for major health problems including myocardial infraction, heart or kidney failure, stroke and cognitive disorders

Despite the existence of effective drug treatments, hypertension remains a poorly controlled condition due to various factors, including the failure to detect readily treatable endocrine forms of hypertension, and the variable response to treatment of patients with the primary form of hypertension.


First published: 25 May 2023