A blood pressure-lowering skin patch could help people recover from stroke and avoid another, offering particular benefit to stroke sufferers who can’t swallow.

As well as assessing how well the patch lowers blood pressure, UK researchers from the University of Nottingham aim to demonstrate that lowering blood pressure after a stroke decreases patients’ chances of having a subsequent stroke and increases their chances of survival.



“After a stroke patients’ blood pressure is often high and this is directly linked with early recurrence of stroke and increased death and dependency,” says researcher Philip Bath. “But so far there have been no large trials assessing whether lowering blood pressure might improve the outcome for patients. One of our aims is to provide the evidence for this.”



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