Genome-wide association study identifies eight loci associated with blood pressure

Elevated blood pressureis a common, heritable cause of cardiovascular disease worldwide. To date, identification of common genetic variants influencing blood pressurehas proven challenging. We tested 2.5 million genotyped and imputed SNPs for association with systolic and diastolic blood pressurein 34,433 subjects of European ancestry from the Global BPgen consortium and followed up findings with direct genotyping (N <= 71,225 European ancestry, N <= 12,889 Indian Asian ancestry) and in silico comparison (CHARGE consortium, N 29,136). We identified association between systolic or diastolic blood pressureand common variants in eight regions near the CYP17A1(P = 7 x 10(-24)), CYP1A2(P = 1 x 10(-23)), FGF5 (P = 1 x 10(-21)), SH2B3 (P = 3 x 10(-18)), MTHFR (P = 2 x 10(-13)), c10orf107 (P = 1 x 10(-9)), ZNF652 (P = 5 x 10(-9)) and PLCD3(P = 1 x 10(-8)) genes. All variants associated with continuous blood pressurewere associated with dichotomous hypertension. These associations between common variants and blood pressureand hypertension offer mechanistic insights into the regulation of blood pressureand may point to novel targets for interventions to prevent cardiovascular disease.