Prospective Evaluation of Confirmatory Testing for Primary Aldosteronism

The goal of this project is to evaluate the use of medical tests for patients with a form of high blood pressure known as primary aldosteronism (PA). PA is a common form of curable hypertension, but establishing a diagnosis can be challenging. Clinical practice guidelines recommend “confirmatory testing” for individuals with positive screening, however it is unknown what the false negative rate of these tests are. This research was initially supported with a grant from Hypertension Canada, and now receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).

Investigator: Dr. Alexander Leung, MD

Study recruitment and analysis is ongoing, but research results for this study hope to:

• Reduce the number of medical tests utilized to diagnose PA
• Evaluate the performance of the saline infusion test, a commonly used medical test used for diagnosing PA
• Study the use of an ultra low-dose cosyntropin (ACTH) stimulation test for PA