ALLEN PARK, Mich. -- Zach Zenner knew it was likely to happen. Late last week, though, the Detroit Lions running back received the final word he had been waiting for.

He was becoming a published medical researcher.

Zenner’s work on hypertension in rats completed in 2016 had been put together as a manuscript this summer and submitted to Dove Press for potential publication in the Journal “Integrated Blood Pressure Control.”

His group received critiques back. They fixed them and now they’ll be published once the final galleys are reviewed.

The title of the manuscript, “Free-radical scavenging reverses fructose-induced salt-sensitive hypertension,” was the produce of his work during the 2016 offseason at the Henry Ford Medical Center under Dr. William Beierwaltes, who is listed as a co-author on the study with Zenner and Kevin Gordish.

“Definitely exciting to have that officially done, accepted for publication. It’s really cool,” Zenner told ESPN on Friday. “I’m thankful for getting to work in Dr. Beierwaltes’ lab. Happy that we were able to get it done in such a short time and so successfully. I think it’s pretty rare to have that kind of thing happen in the time frame that we have. So it’s really cool. It’s really special.

“As far as moving forward, everyone tells me it’ll be helpful and I know it’ll be helpful but until that day, it’s a very cool and cool thing to have and I look forward to using it. But also it’ll be cool even if nothing ever comes of it, to keep building on that and could be the start of something totally different in my life.”

Zenner’s plan as of now is to keep playing football -- he’s a restricted free agent following this season. In the offseason, he once again plans to work at the VA Hospital in Detroit under Dr. Noreen Rossi, who he worked for last offseason on another hypertension project.

And medical school is still in his future following football as well. A side benefit to being part of a published work is that he’s been using the medical research to continue to show the Sanford School of Medicine, where he has been accepted to study, how serious he is about that. He emails them yearly on his progress and his plans for the following season.

So far, Zenner said, they have kept his admission available.

“Would love to still stay accepted and go to your med school when this is done, when it’s over,” Zenner said. “It’ll be really nice to send them this document because you can talk about it all you want, you know, but really doing it and having something to show for it is going to be big.

"I’m excited to share that and I’m excited to share it with a lot of people. I’ve talked to a lot of people about this, my family, at med school at Sanford. It’ll be fun to share.”

For a person not yet in medical school to be the lead author in a medical study is very rare, Beierwaltes told ESPN. For the soon-to-be-published study, Zenner wrote the methods to test blood pressure and hypertension in rats using both high-salt and fructose diets. They were testing whether or not a drug known as Tempol could help slow the formation of hypertension.

This, in turn, could help slow the growth of one type of hypertension and diabetes. While the testing was done in rats, the hope is studies like this one could eventually help humans change their diets to avoid hypertension and diabetes.

That Zenner, who has an undergraduate degree from South Dakota State and has been a Lions running back the past three seasons, is the lead author on the study is massive for his medical future.

“Huge. He’s not a medical student yet. He doesn’t have a single day,” Beierwaltes told ESPN this summer. “So in science, the most important single thing in science is publication. And this, a real research study as opposed to a case study or a review, there’s lots of different things you can publish.

“But the gold standard is an original research study, and that’s what this will be. This will be a completely original research study. He will be the principal author. He’s the first author. It was his work. He did it all.”

Beierwaltes told ESPN on Thursday he has also paid for “open access” for the paper so anyone can read it without subscribing to the specific journal or search engines. Beierwaltes said they expected critiques back on the manuscript because of the nature of their findings but none were “particularly harsh,” mostly questions to help improve the final product.

That final product, with Zenner’s name at the top, will soon be available for the entire world to see.