Scientists at Stanford found a surprising link between high blood pressure and multiple sclerosis that could quickly pave the way to an inexpensive new approach to treating the disease.

After noting that the brains of patients suffering from MS had high levels of an enzyme that spawns angiotensin, a hormone that's known to spur high blood pressure, a scientific team at Stanford University School of Medicine set out to test whether a blood pressure therapy could treat symptoms of the disease in mice. And they reported success with the drug lisinopril.

"We were able to show that all the targets for lisinopril are there and ready for therapeutic manipulation in the multiple-sclerosis lesions of human patients," said Stanford's Dr. Lawrence Steinman, a noted expert in the MS field. Dr. William Karpus, a professor of pathology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the team had engineered a significant new breakthrough that holds the promise of a new approach to treating MS.

- read the report in the Chicago Sun-Times