Treating Hypertension: 107 New Blood Pressure Genes Change Everything
At FOMAT, cardiovascular research is one of our core therapeutic areas and treating hypertension is among the most critical challenges we encounter across our patient communities. The discovery of 107 new gene regions linked to blood pressure represents a significant step toward precision medicine approaches that could one day allow doctors to intervene before hypertension even develops.
Understanding the genetic basis of blood pressure also helps inform how future cardiovascular trials are designed and who should be prioritized for enrollment. Here is what this large scale genetic study found.
The Study: Scale and Scope
Scientists have found 107 new gene regions associated with high blood pressure, potentially enabling doctors to identify at risk patients and target treatments more effectively.
The study, led by Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College London, suggests that genetic testing could allow doctors to target medication to specific hypertension patients and advise on appropriate lifestyle changes to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. The findings are published in Nature Genetics.
Hypertension affects around one in three adults — approximately 15 million people — in the UK alone, and is a leading risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and death worldwide. It is caused by a complex interplay between genetics and lifestyle factors such as diet, weight, alcohol consumption, and exercise.
The researchers tested 9.8 million genetic variants from 420,000 UK Biobank participants and cross referenced these with their blood pressure data. Of the 107 new gene regions, many were expressed at high levels in blood vessels and cardiovascular tissue, and could be potential new drug targets for treating hypertension.
A Genetic Risk Score for Treating Hypertension
The team also developed a genetic risk score by linking health and hospital data from UK Biobank participants with their blood pressure genetics, showing that the score could predict increased risk of stroke and coronary heart disease.
The higher a patient’s risk score, the more likely they were to have high blood pressure by age 50. Those at the top end of the risk scale were likely to have 10mmHg higher blood pressure than patients with lower risk scores. For every 10mmHg above normal, the risk of heart disease and stroke increases by around 50% or more.
If such a genetic risk score could be measured in early life, it might be possible to take a personalized medicine approach to offset a person’s high risk. This could involve lifestyle interventions such as changing sodium and potassium intake, weight management, reducing alcohol consumption, and increasing exercise.
What Researchers Say
Professor Mark Caulfield, co lead author from QMUL’s William Harvey Research Institute, said that finding 107 new genetic regions linked to blood pressure almost doubles the number of genes available to evaluate for drug treatment, potentially providing the basis for new preventative therapies and lifestyle interventions.
Professor Paul Elliott, co lead author and Chair in Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine at Imperial’s School of Public Health, emphasized that while everyone should maintain healthy lifestyles to reduce disease risk, these findings may help doctors identify earlier those most at risk of high blood pressure in mid life and intervene before it develops.
“We cannot help our genetic makeup, but we can help our lifestyles,” Professor Elliott added, “and in future, we may be able to alter our lifestyles while knowing whether we are at a genetic advantage or disadvantage.”
Implications for Treating Hypertension in Clinical Practice
Genetic testing to provide risk scores is not yet widely available for common diseases, but it could one day become routine. Doctors might eventually determine a child’s genetic risk of conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and possibly even cancer — allowing for early lifestyle interventions that counteract genetic predisposition.
This research was supported by the National Institute for Health Research. UK Biobank was established by the Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, Department of Health, and Scottish Government.
Understanding how discoveries like these translate into new treatments requires understanding the clinical trial process. Our introduction to clinical trials explains how research moves from genetic discovery to Phase I through Phase IV studies and ultimately to patient care.
For those managing related metabolic conditions, our article on diabetes awareness covers the genetic and lifestyle factors that connect hypertension and diabetes — two conditions that frequently co occur and share overlapping risk factors.
According to the American Heart Association, nearly half of American adults have high blood pressure — making advances in treating hypertension through genetic research a vital public health priority.