GENETIC ANALYSIS OF HYPERTENSION IN GHANA

与欧洲裔美国人相比，高血压对非裔美国人的影响不成比例。有人认为这是由于遗传易感性在美国引起了明显的表型差异。此外，众所周知，黑人和白人对高血压的治疗是不同的。因此，重要的是要了解这种疾病在非裔美国人中的潜在遗传学，以便更好地诊断和治疗受影响的个人。由于原发性高血压的病因很复杂，因此有必要简化对这种疾病的任何研究，以最大限度地发现易感基因。我将通过研究西非个人的这种疾病来做到这一点。有两件事使这一战略更有可能成功。首先，西非人的基因比非洲裔非洲人的同质性更高；非洲裔美国人的基因组大约有30%是欧洲人。因此，在美国，许多基因分析将无法检测到即使是温和影响的基因，因为不同的易感基因可能存在于整个非裔美国人中，甚至可能是同一个家庭。这将使这些基因中的任何一个都很难甚至不可能被检测到。其次，这种疾病在非洲比较罕见，这使得那些患有高血压的人更有可能具有遗传易感性。这项拟议的研究将从加纳招募个人来研究几个基因与原发性高血压的关联。将在两个研究领域中的每个领域采取两种方法。首先，将从阿克拉和农村的高血压和正常血压个人中随机采集人群样本。这种关联将被用来比较整个基因组中标记个体的等位基因频率和基因型频率。农村人口将特别重要，因为非洲农村地区的高血压发病率一般低于10%，在这种环境中患有这种疾病的人最有可能缺乏最强的遗传易感性。

Hypertension affects a disproportionate number of African-Americans as compared to European Americans. It has been suggested that this is due to a genetic predisposition that causes accentuated phenotypic differences in the US. In addition, it is well known that treatment of hypertension in Blacks is different from that in Whites. It is therefore important to understand the underlying genetics of this disease in African-Americans in order to better diagnose and treat affected individuals. Since the etiology of essential hypertension is complex, it is necessary to simplify any study of this disease to maximize the possibly of finding predisposing genes. I will do this by studying the disease in individuals from West Africa. Two things make this strategy more likely to succeed. First, West Africans are genetically more homogeneous than African-Africans; the African-American genome is approximately 30% European. Therefore, in the US many genetic analyses will be unable to detect genes with even a moderate effect because different predisposing genes may be present in the African-Americans as a whole and perhaps even the same family. This will make the detection of any of these genes difficult to impossible. Second, the disease is rarer in Africa,, making those individuals who are hypertensive more likely to have a genetic predisposition. The proposed study will recruit individuals from Ghana to study the association of several genes with essential hypertension. Two approaches will be taken in each of two study areas. First, random population samples will be collected from both hypertensive and normotensive individuals in Accra and rural villages. This association will be used to compare allele frequencies and genotype frequencies from individuals in the markers throughout the genome. The rural populations will be especially important as the incidence of hypertension in rural Africa is generally below 10% and individuals who have the disease in this environment are most likely to short the strongest genetic predisposition.