Boston, Massachusetts (AHN)-A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine offers intriguing insight into the possibility of postponing hypertension among the 59 million Americans whose blood pressure is slightly high.

The results come from a rigorous four-year study of 772 people with a condition called pre-hypertension, in which blood pressure is elevated over normal levels but not high enough to meet the criteria for a formal diagnosis of hypertension.

University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center researcher Stevo Julius, M.D., says, "This study, which is the first of its kind, shows that postponement of hypertension onset through medical treatment is feasible, and without side effects...However, the effect is moderate, and further studies in younger people and over longer periods of time are needed in order to demonstrate clinical usefulness."

Julius and his colleagues proposed the study to the pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca, which agreed to fund and organize the study. The study involved adults between the ages of 30 and 65 who were enrolled at 71 centers in the United States. The average age was 48, and 60 percent of participants were men.

Now, the researchers say, more studies of pre-hypertension are needed, to complement the large amount of research on end-stage hypertension that has been carried out in recent years.

According to the American Heart Association, high blood pressure was listed as a primary or contributing cause of death in about 277,000 American deaths in the year 2003.