International Circulation: Please talk about your understanding of translational medicine and how can we， or should we， apply it in the prevention and treatment of hypertension? What are the pros and cons of the concept?

《国际循环》：请谈谈您对转化医学的理解，在高血压的防治领域我们应该怎么做？

Professor Sleight: Translational medicine is a new term for getting new knowledge translated into action via the government， the public health system and the delivery of health care. It is true that this normally takes a very long time and anything we can do to speed this up is very important. The pros are it will focus people more on getting results into practice. Cons might be that something could be lost if this is sped  up too much and we have to be very careful with the side effects of treatment and that is something that is a little worrying.  I think it is an oscillating process. A lot of the advances have come from clinical observation of the problem and then feeding it back into the lab and then getting it back into the population and then that needs refinement， so a little iteration to and fro happens. It won’t be as smooth as people think. It is a trendy term but there are a lot of problems in the middle， but the concept is generally thought to be good. I don’t hear many voices against it and I think anything that translates knowledge into prevention for the population is absolutely essential.