What is brain pressure? Symptoms of life-threatening intracranial hypertension revealed – Express.co.uk

Chronic IH can result in a blood clot on the brain, a brain tumour, a brain infection or a blood clot on the brain.

It can be life threatening if it is not diagnosed or treated.

Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension - also known as IIH mainly affects women in their 20s and 30s and has been linked to being overweight, hormone problems such as Cushings syndrome, taking the contraceptive pill, lack of red blood cells, lupus and kidney disease.

The cause of the condition is unclear.

Symptoms of chronic IH can include a constant headache - which can be worse in the morning and can occur while coughing, blurred or double vision, temporary loss of vision, feeling and being sick, drowsiness and irritability.

If IH comes on suddenly, it could be as a result of stroke, severe head injury, or a brain abscess.

Scientists have now discovered common obesity and diabetes drug reduces rise in brain pressure.

New research

Research led by the University of Birmingham, published in Science Translational Medicine, has discovered that a drug commonly used to treat patients with either obesity or Type 2 diabetes could be used as a new new way to lower brain pressure.

IHH causes disabling daily headaches and severely raised pressure around the nerves in the eye. It also causes permanent vision loss in 25 per cent of untreated people.

Over three years, researchers at the University of Birmingham examined whether GLP-1 agonist drugs - existing drugs used in the treatment of diabetes and obesity - could reduce intracranial pressure in an animal model of raised brain pressure.

Treatments to lower brain pressure are lacking and new treatments are desperately needed, said Dr Alexandra Sinclair, of the University of Birmingham's Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research.

The current primary treatment in IIH is acetazolamide and this does not work well for many patients, while also having such severe side effects that our previous trials have shown that 48 per cent of patients stop taking it.

We have shown that the GLP-1 agonist extendin-4 significantly reduces brain pressure rapidly and dramatically, by around 44 per cent with significant effects from just ten minutes of dosing the biggest reduction we have seen in anything we have previously tested.

"Whats more, we found that the effects last at least 24 hours.

These findings are rapidly translatable into a new novel treatment strategy for IIH as GLP-1 agonists are safe and widely-used drugs used to treat diabetes and obesity.

They are also potentially game-changing for other conditions featuring raised brain pressure, including stroke, hydrocephalus and traumatic brain injury.

We are very excited that this novel treatment strategy could make a landmark change for future patient care.

The findings are due to be presented on September 8th and 9th in Vancouver at the International Headache Society Meeting, followed by the British Endocrine Society meeting in the UK.

The University of Birmingham is now due to begin a clinical trial to test GLP-1 agonist drug in patients with raised brain pressure.

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What is brain pressure? Symptoms of life-threatening intracranial hypertension revealed - Express.co.uk