International study identifies new gene targets for hypertension treatment
Sunday, September 11, 2011 - 12:30
in Health & Medicine
A new international report from scientists around the world finds that common variants in 28 regions of DNA are associated with blood pressure in human patients. Of the identified regions, most were completely unsuspected, although some harbor genes suspected of influencing blood pressure based on animal studies. In the study receiving advance online publication in Nature, members of the International Consortium for Blood Pressure Genome-Wide Association Studies (ICBP-GWAS) analyzed genetic data from over 275,000 individuals from around the world. They also identified for the first time the involvement of an important physiologic pathway in blood pressure control, potentially leading to a totally new class of hypertension drugs.