Primary Aldosteronism: Prevalence, Clinical Features and Biomarkers

Hypertension affects over 6 million Australians and is a leading risk factor for heart attack and stroke. Most people with hypertension have "essential hypertension" (i.e. they have no reversible cause), but a proportion have a treatable secondary cause of which the most common is primary aldosteronism (PA) caused by excessive production of aldosterone hormone. We found that 14% of patients with early-stage hypertension who present to their General Practitioners have PA. Unfortunately, there are no clinical markers that can reliably distinguish PA from essential hypertension, but we found genetic signatures which could help diagnose PA. Thus, our study showed that PA is much more common than currently thought and further work is needed to improve its detection rate and enable timely treatment of this potentially curable form of hypertension.