The winners of the Japanese Society of Hypertension (JSH) 13th Hypertension Research Awards were announced at the JSH Opening Ceremony, held on October 14, 2022, in Kyoto, Japan. These awards were established in 2010 to recognize significant contributions to the advancement of research in hypertension and related fields. Of the large number of articles published in Hypertension Research, the official journal of JSH, from April 2021 (Vol. 44, No. 4) to March 2022 (Vol. 45, No. 3), the journal’s editorial committee members selected the following three winners.

Hypertension Research Excellence Award

This award was given to Dr. Kazuomi Kario and colleagues from the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Medicine, Jichi Medical University School of Medicine, Tochigi, Japan, for their paper titled “Catheter-based ultrasound renal denervation in patients with resistant hypertension: the randomized, controlled REQUIRE trial” (Hypertens Res. 2022;45:221–231). The sham-controlled REnal denervation on Quality of 24-hr BP control by Ultrasound In Resistant hypertension (REQUIRE) trial was a multicenter, randomized, single-blind, sham-controlled trial that enrolled patients from Japan and South Korea to assess the blood pressure-lowering efficacy of renal denervation in hypertensive Asian patients. Systolic blood pressure (BP) reduction from baseline in the 24-hour ambulatory group at 3 months was not significantly different between the renal denervation (−6.6 mmHg) and sham control (−6.5 mmHg) groups (difference: −0.1, 95% confidence interval: −5.5, 5.3; p = 0.971). This trial indicated a neutral result in blood pressure reduction between the renal denervation group and the sham control group. This unexpected finding may have been caused by shortcomings in the design and conduct of this trial; however, these are valuable data on the use of renal denervation in patients of Asian ethnicity.

Hypertension Research Award

The 2022 recipient of this award was Dr. Kenichi Yokota and colleagues from the Department of Internal Medicine, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan, for their paper titled “CASZ1b is a novel transcriptional corepressor of mineralocorticoid receptor” (Hypertens Res. 2021;44:407-416). This experimental study demonstrated that the zinc finger protein castor homolog 1 isoform b (CASZ1b), which was revealed as a hypertension-associated protein by a genome-wide association study, was identified via liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry analysis as an MR corepressor. CASZ1b colocalized with MRs in the kidneys and interacted with MRs in an aldosterone-dependent manner. CASZ1b functioned as an aldosterone-dependent adapter protein bridging MRs and the nucleosome remodeling deacetylase Mi-2/NuRD and repressed the expression levels of the MR target genes epithelial Na+ channel-α (ENaCα) and serum/glucocorticoid regulated kinase 1 (SGK1), indicating that CASZ1b may become a target in the pathogenesis of hypertension in the future.

Hypertension Research Award

The final award for the last year was presented to Dr. Tomohiro Takahashi and colleagues from the Department of Critical Care, Disaster and General Medicine, Division of General Medicine, Iwate Medical University School of Medicine, Morioka, Iwate, Japan, for their paper titled “Five-year blood pressure trajectories of survivors of the tsunami following the Great East Japan Earthquake in Iwate” (Hypertens Res. 2021;44:581–590). In Japan, a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011, and a consequent massive tsunami inundated the northeast coast of Japan. In their study, tsunami survivors who suffered substantial damage have been shown to experience increases in BP immediately after the disaster and in the medium to long term. A total of 3914 subjects were assessed from 2010 to 2015. They divided the subjects into two groups, those who relocated (substantial damage) and those who did not (little damage), and compared the BP trajectories between the groups over the first 5 years after the disaster. They concluded that the systolic BP values decreased in the medium to long term after the disaster, and the people in the group that relocated had a larger decrease in systolic BP than the people in the group that did not relocate.