Hypertension Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Hypertension, including details on symptoms, diagnosis, diet, treatment, causes.

Genetics of human hypertension.

Agarwal A, Williams GH, Fisher ND

Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, 221 Longwood Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Hypertension is a complex genetic disorder caused by interplay between several "risk" genes and environmental factors (genetic heritability approximately 30%). Most genetic studies of hypertension use a candidate gene approach and two conclusions have been made: there is no association or linkage with the genes studied, or the hypertension phenotype is heterogeneous and subgroups with hypertension related to certain polymorphisms cannot be identified because of background noise. Studies using intermediate phenotypes suggest the latter is most likely. Another problem is the reliability of gene structure assessment: usually only one or two gene polymorphisms are assessed. The use of intermediate phenotypes and dense mapping of candidate genes would provide a better approach for identifying genotype-phenotype correlations, which might enable the use of genotypes to identify more-specific therapeutic and preventative measures for hypertensives.

Published 5 April 2005 in Trends Endocrinol Metab, 16(3): 127-33.
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