POLYMORPHISMS OF CANDIDATE GENES IN ESSENTIAL HYPERTENSION

Abstract
1. Family and population studies have reported that blood pressure has a heritability of 30-50%, but simple genetic models do not readily explain the patterns of inheritance of hypertension. 2. Restriction fragment length polymorphisms were used to study allele frequencies of a selection of candidate genes that may be important in determining the genetic component of hypertension. These included the genes for renin, haptoglobin, neuropeptide Y and cardiac myosin beta heavy chain. 3. There was no significant association between alleles at any of these loci and the presence of hypertension in this population, suggesting that the contribution of variation at these loci to the genetic component of the variance in hypertension may be quite small.