Harnessing the therapeutic potential of atrial natriuretic peptide

The biological actions of Atrial Natriuretic Peptide (ANP) make it potentially useful in the treatment of hypertension and heart failure. We review here the physiology of ANP, the effects of infusion in heart failure and hypertension and preliminary data suggesting that inhibition of endopeptidase 24.11, the enzyme degrading ANP, is an effective mechanism of raising circulating levels of endogenous ANP. Due to the rate of progress in this field we have restricted ourselves to recent work much of which is still available only in abstract form. For more complete accounts the reader is referred to recent reviews [9, 11, 14].