GENETIC SUSCEPTIBILITY FOR HUMAN FAMILIAL ESSENTIAL-HYPERTENSION IN AREGION OF HOMOLOGY WITH BLOOD-PRESSURE LINKAGE ON RAT-CHROMOSOME-10

Hypertension is a significant risk factor for heart attack and stroke and represents a major public health burden because of its high preval ence (e.g. 15-20% of the European and American populations). Although brood pressure is known to have a strong genetic determination, the ge nes responsible for susceptibility to essential hypertension are mostl y unknown. Loci involved in blood pressure regulation have been found by linkage in experimental hereditary hypertensive rat strains, but th eir relationship to human hypertension has not been extensively invest igated. One of the principal blood pressure loci has been mapped to ra t chromosome 10 and we have undertaken an investigation of the homolog ous region on human chromosome 17 in familiar essential hypertension. Affected sib-pair analysis and parametric analysis with ascertainment correction gave significant evidence of linkage (P <0.0001 in some ana lyses) near two closely linked microsatellite markers, D17S183 and D17 S934, that reside 18 cM proximal to the ACE locus in the homology regi on. Our results indicate that chromosome 17q could contain a susceptib ility locus for human hypertension and show that comparative mapping m ay be a useful approach for identification of such loci in humans.