Genetic susceptibility for human familial essential hypertension in a region of homology with blood pressure linkage on rat chromosome 10

Hypertension is a significant risk factor for heart attack and stroke andrepresents a major public health burden because of its high prevalence(e.g. 15-20% of the European and American populations). Although bloodpressure is known to have a strong genetic determination, the genesresponsible for susceptibility to essential hypertension are mostlyunknown. Loci involved in blood pressure regulation have been found bylinkage in experimental hereditary hypertensive rat strains, but theirrelationship to human hypertension has not been extensively investigated.One of the principal blood pressure loci has been mapped to rat chromosome10 and we have undertaken an investigation of the homologous region onhuman chromosome 17 in familial essential hypertension. Affected sib-pairanalysis and parametric analysis with ascertainment correction gavesignificant evidence of linkage ( P <0.0001 in some analyses) near twoclosely linked microsatellite markers, D17S183 and D17S934, that reside 18cM proximal to the ACE locus in the homology region. Our results indicatethat chromosome 17q could contain a susceptibility locus for humanhypertension and show that comparative mapping may be a useful approach foridentification of such loci in humans.