High blood pressure linked to gene regulation
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Genes, as much as treadmills and salads, dictate blood pressure. But new research from Rockefeller University suggests that even the tiniest changes to our DNA can create a predisposition to hypertension.
Scientists have focused much of their efforts to understand high blood pressure on a gene called the angiotensinogen gene, which codes for a protein that helps regulate and maintain normal blood pressure. In a study published this month in Human Heredity, Jürg Ott, head of the Laboratory of Statistical Genetics, reports that in some subsets of the population, a small area of DNA outside of the angiotensinogen gene plays an important role in its activity.
These changes, which have now been linked to hypertension in African-Americans and in Caucasian women, increased the angiotensinogen gene’s activity, leading to more angiotensinogen protein in the blood. One variation in particular appeared to more than double the risk of disease in African American men.
“Hypertension is much more prevalent in the African-American population,” says Ott, head of Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Statistical Genetics. “However, comparatively little work has been done to understand the genetics behind hypertension in this population.”
These findings are just the tip of the iceberg and, Ott says, they show that the area of the gene responsible for regulating production of angiotensinogen is fertile ground for future hypertension research.
