Abstract
The genes in the renin–angiotensin system are important physiologic candidates in studies of the genetic susceptibility to hypertension. Limited information has been available in most studies on the extent of variation in the candidate loci or the modifying effects of different environmental settings. We consequently genotyped 13 polymorphisms at the angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE) locus at an average distance of 2 kb in 2776 family members from Nigeria, Jamaica and an African-American community in the US. Allele and haplotype frequencies were similar in the three populations, with modest evidence of European admixture in the US. Two markers were consistently associated with ACE level in the three samples and the proportion of variance accounted for by ACE8 was similar in the three groups. No evidence of consistent association of single markers was noted with blood pressure across the three population samples, however. Likewise, in a haplotype-based analysis, despite significant associations within each population, the findings were not replicated consistently across all three samples. We did observe, however, that the overtransmitted haplotypes among hypertensives were drawn from a single clade, suggesting that susceptibility may cluster in patterns not captured directly by our markers.
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Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the substantial support of The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics under the direction of GM Lathrop, and the provision of genotyping facilities and assistance by R Cox and his laboratory, especially the work of Alison Hughill. Partial support for this project was also provided by an internal grant from the University of Oxford, and by grants from the NHLBI (HL45508; HL 47910), NIGMS (GM28356) and NCRR(RR03655). We thank the residents of Igbo-Ora, Nigeria, Spanish Town, Jamaica and Maywood, IL, USA for their willing participation in this research project.
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Bouzekri, N., Zhu, X., Jiang, Y. et al. Angiotensin I-converting enzyme polymorphisms, ACE level and blood pressure among Nigerians, Jamaicans and African-Americans. Eur J Hum Genet 12, 460–468 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201166
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201166
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