Evidence of a major gene effect for angiotensinogen among Nigerians

To dissect the genetic pathway of hypertension, we measured angiotensinogen in 685 members of 186 families recruited from a rural community in southwe st Nigeria. Commingling and segregation analyses were carried out. A mixtur e of two and/or three distributions fits the data significantly better than a single distribution in commingling analysis, suggesting a major gene eff ect. Segregation analysis confirmed that a recessive major gene model for l ow values of angiotensinogen provides the best fit to the data and about 13 % of the variance was due to the recessive gene segregation.