Research article

Suggestive linkage detected for blood pressure related traits on 2q and 22q in the population on the Samoan islands

Karolina Åberg^1,8 , Feng Dai^1,2,3 , Satupaitea Viali⁴ , John Tuitele⁵ , Guangyun Sun⁶ , Subba R Indugula⁶ , Ranjan Deka⁶ , Daniel E Weeks^1,2 and Stephen T McGarvey⁷

¹  Department of Human Genetics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, 130 Desoto St, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA

²  Department of Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, 130 Desoto St, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA

³  Department of Anesthesiology, School of medicine, University of Pittsburgh, 3550 Terrace Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA

⁴  Tupua Tamasese Meaole Hospital, Ministry of Health, Government of Samoa, Apia, Samoa

⁵  Tafuna Family Health Center, Department of Health, American Samoa Government, Pago Pago, 96799, American Samoa

⁶  Center for Genome Information, Department of Environmental Health, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45267, USA

⁷  International Health Institute, Brown University, 121 S. Main St, Providence, RI 02912, USA

⁸  Center for Biomarker Research and Personalized Medicine, School of Pharmacy, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1112 East Clay St, Richmond, VA 23298, USA

author email corresponding author email

BMC Medical Genetics 2009, 10:107doi:10.1186/1471-2350-10-107

Published:	23 October 2009

Abstract

Background

High blood pressure or hypertension is a major risk factor involved in the development of cardiovascular diseases. We conducted genome-wide variance component linkage analyses to search for loci influencing five blood pressure related traits including the quantitative traits systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and pulse pressure (PP), the dichotomous trait hypertension (HT) and the bivariate quantitative trait SBP-DBP in families residing in American Samoa and Samoa, as well as in the combined sample from the two polities. We adjusted the traits for a number of environmental covariates such as smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity and material life style.

Results

We found suggestive univariate linkage for SBP on chromosome 2q35-q37 (LOD 2.4) and for PP on chromosome 22q13 (LOD 2.2), two chromosomal regions that recently have been associated with SBP and PP, respectively.

Conclusion

We have detected additional evidence for a recently reported locus associated with SBP on chromosome 2q and a susceptibility locus for PP on chromosome 22q. However, differences observed between the results from our three partly overlapping genetically homogenous study samples from the Samoan islands suggest that additional studies should be performed in order to verify these results.