‘Causal’ blood pressure genes found in human kidney
Published: 12 May 2021
Institute Reader in Immunology Dr Pasquale Maffia and ICAMS' Professor Tomasz Guzik are part of an international team of scientists who have discovered 179 kidney genes responsible for high blood pressure.
Institute Reader in Immunology Dr Pasquale Maffia and ICAMS' Professor Tomasz Guzik are part of an international team of scientists who have discovered 179 kidney genes responsible for high blood pressure.
The discoveries, published in Nature Genetics, shed new light on our understanding of genetic predisposition to high blood pressure. The study was possible through access to huge datasets of human DNA and RNA from possibly the world’s largest repository of human kidney tissue-based omics.
The team, led by Professor Maciej Tomaszewski at the University of Manchester, characterised how information inherited in DNA translates into genetic predisposition to high blood through changes in activity of certain kidney genes.
Around 80 per cent of the 179 genes discovered by the team have never before been associated with high blood pressure.
These exciting discoveries uncover a range of new possible mechanisms of hypertension some related to blood vessels, kidneys but also body immune defences. Some of these genes can be targeted by existing medicines creating new opportunities to treat high blood pressure.
Professor James Leiper, Associate Medical Director at the BHF, said: “We have known for many years that the kidney is a major regulator of blood pressure, but our understanding of precisely how the kidney controls blood pressure is incomplete.
"The identification of this large set of genes that appear to directly affect blood pressure fills in an important missing piece of that puzzle.
"The researchers have also found a subset of these genes that are a potential new target for the treatment of hypertension. This is important because many people taking existing medications still struggle to control their blood pressure.
"If doctors have more tools to work with then it will help stop thousands of lives being lost each year from this potentially preventable condition."
Uncovering genetic mechanisms of hypertension through multi-omic analysis of the kidney
- James M. Eales, Xiao Jiang, Xiaoguang Xu, Sushant Saluja, Artur Akbarov, Eddie Cano-Gamez, Michelle T. McNulty, Christopher Finan, Hui Guo, Wojciech Wystrychowski, Monika Szulinska, Huw B. Thomas, Sanjeev Pramanik, Sandesh Chopade, Priscilla R. Prestes, Ingrid Wise, Evangelos Evangelou, Mahan Salehi, Yusif Shakanti, Mikael Ekholm, Matthew Denniff, Alicja Nazgiewicz, Felix Eichinger, Bradley Godfrey, Andrzej Antczak, Maciej Glyda, Robert Król, Stephen Eyre, Jason Brown, Carlo Berzuini, John Bowes, Mark Caulfield, Ewa Zukowska-Szczechowska, Joanna Zywiec, Pawel Bogdanski, Matthias Kretzler, Adrian S. Woolf, David Talavera, Bernard Keavney, Pasquale Maffia, Tomasz J. Guzik, Raymond T. O’Keefe, Gosia Trynka, Nilesh J. Samani, Aroon Hingorani, Matthew G. Sampson, Andrew P. Morris, Fadi J. Charchar & Maciej Tomaszewski
- Nat Genet 53, 630–637 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-021-00835-w
First published: 12 May 2021