The confounding effect of cryptic relatedness for environmental risks of systolic blood pressure on cohort studies.

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We investigated the confounding effect of unadjusted cryptic relatedness (CR) among a rural cohort in the relationship between environmental risk factors (body mass index, smoking status, alcohol consumption) and systolic blood pressure (SBP). We applied the methods of population-based whole-genome association studies for the analysis of the genome-wide SNP data in 1622 subjects, and detected 20.2% CR in this cohort population. In conclusion, we found a confounding effect of CR in the relationship between SBP and environmental risk factors was not negligible. In our study, we showed that heritability for liability might reflect on the estimation of regression coeffients between SBP and environmental risk factors, because they vary with environmental risk factors that differ across some unsuspected relatedness.