Saturday Sep 20 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- Got hypertension?    It may be time to try intravenous injection of vitamin C.   A new Italian study found that vitamin C intravenously delivered can lower blood pressure by acting on an overactive central nervous system.

Dr. Rosa Maria Bruno from the University of Pisa, coauthor of the study, was quoted by healthday.com as saying "our study demonstrated for the first time in humans that we can reduce sympathetic nervous system over-activity, and consequently blood pressure, (by) targeting oxidative stress."

The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) is part of the central nervous system that controls blood pressure among other things.    Low activity of the SNS is coupled with the onset of elevated blood pressure.

The finding was presented Friday at the American Heart Association's Conference of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research held in Atlanta.

Early studies have already showed that vitamin C and potentially other antioxidants in the blood may help lower the risk of stroke.

The current study involved 12 patients with an essential form of high blood pressure who had not received any treatment for their high blood pressure.   All the participants were intravenously administered three grams of vitamin C during a period of five minutes and then monitored for blood pressure and SNS activity for 20 minutes.

It was found that SNS activity dropped by 11 percent and blood pressure was lowered by about 7 percent on average.   The decrease in diastolic blood pressure was 9 percent while systolic blood pressure did not change significantly.