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