Background: Primary hypertension is the leading risk factor of cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality, and contributes to severe global health burden. Emerging evidence has shown a close association between gut microbiota and hypertension. Fecal transplantation from hypertensive patients/animals to germ-free mice caused elevation of blood pressure, indicating a causal role of gut dysbiosis in hypertension. Probiotics were found to have a potential anti-hypertensive effect in both human and rodent studies. Based on the investigators' previous findings of metagenomics analysis of hypertensive, prehypertensive patients and healthy control, hypertensive and prehypertensive patients were lack of probiotics. Therefore, the investigators developed this study to explore the effect, safety, and underlying mechanisms of the combination of probiotics, containing 10 strains from Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, on hypertension, compared with placebo.~Objective: To explore the effect, safety, and underlying mechanisms of the combination of probiotics on grade 1 primary hypertension and prehypertension.~Study Design: A multicenter, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled pilot study.~Data quality control and statistical analysis: The investigators have invited professional statistic analysts to assist in analyzing data and a third party to supervise data quality.~Ethics: The Ethics Committee of Fuwai Hospital approved this study. Informed consent before patient enrollment is required.
Gut microbiota was found to play a causal role in the pathogenesis of hypertension. Probiotics were shown to have a potential anti-hypertensive effect in human/rodent studies. This study aims to explore the effect, safety, and underlying mechanisms of the combination of probiotics, containing 10 strains from Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, on hypertension, compared with placebo.