Study of the Arachidonate 5-Lipoxygenase Enzyme in Affecting the Risk for Coronary Heart Disease

Inclusion Criteria

-Current hypertension (blood pressure > 140/90 mmHg) or current use of anti-hypertensive medications AND

Exclusion Criteria

• Current use of lipid-lowering medications
• Current use of montelukast
• Poorly controlled hypertension, where systolic blood pressure is greater than 160 or diastolic blood pressure is greater than 100
• Use of steroid drugs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or other anti-inflammatory medications in the two weeks prior to enrollment. (low dose aspirin ( < 325 mg) is OK, but indication must be cardiovascular)
• Current recreational drug use
• Other cardiovascular disease or previous cardiovascular event. These include:
• history of angina pectoris
• history of heart failure
• presence of a cardiac pacemaker
• history of myocardial infarction
• previous revascularization procedure
• history cerebrovascular disease including stroke and transient ischemic attack
• Pregnancy or lactation
• Diabetes mellitus
• Lactose intolerance
• Contraindications to montelukast therapy
• Alcoholism
• Known hepatic disease
• Existing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, allergic rhinitis
• Active chronic immune, infectious, neoplastic or inflammatory diseases requiring therapy (such as active Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV))
• Immunosuppressant therapy or known immunosuppression due to disease high density lipoprotein (HDL) < 40 mg/dL (although this would be a risk factor for heart disease, because of preliminary data which indicates that montelukast may lower HDL levels, we will exclude patients with abnormally low HDL from study)
• Other criteria at investigator discretion that are deemed to make the subject a poor candidate for the study