New genes implicated in high blood pressure

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, along with an international team of collaborators, have identified common genetic changes associated with blood pressure and hypertension. The study, reporting online next week in Nature Genetics, breaks new ground in understanding blood pressure regulation and may lead to advances in hypertension therapy. "Strikingly, none of the genes we identified as having common variation are part of the system we know about that regulates blood pressure – the genes identified are not the ones targeted by current prescription drugs to control hypertension," says Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D., head of the Center for Complex Disease Genomics in the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Hopkins. "If we can increase the number of genes implicated in blood pressure maintenance from the current 12 to the expected 50 in the next year, our understanding of the biology will change completely." more on "Eurekalert":[ http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/jhmi-ngi050709.php]

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