Baseline clinical and BP parameters may be used to predict the efficacy of antihypertensive therapies. The GENRES Study material should provide an excellent platform for future pharmacogenetic analyses of antihypertensive drug responsiveness.

This study describes the first mutation located in the extracellular domain of an ENaC subunit associated with an increased ENaC activity and Liddle's syndrome.

Background: Rare mutations of the epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) result in the monogenic hypertension form of Liddle's syndrome. We decided to screen for common variants in the ENaC βand γ subunits in patients with essential hypertension and to relate their occurrence to the activity

This article presents and compares coronavirus disease 2019 attack rates for infection, hospitalization, intensive care unit (ICU) admission and death in healthcare workers (HCWs) and non-HCWs in nine European countries from 31 st January 2020 to 13 th January 2021. Adjusted attack rate ratios in HCWs (compared with non-HCWs) were 3.0 [95% confidence interval (CI) 2.2–4.0] for infection, 1.8 (95% CI 1.2–2.7) for hospitalization, 1.9 (95% CI 1.1–3.2) for ICU admission and 0.9 (95% CI 0.4–2.0) for death. Among hospitalized cases, the case-fatality ratio was 1.8% in HCWs and 8.2% in non-HCWs. Differences may be due to better/earlier access to treatment, differential underascertainment and the healthy worker effect.

Altered electrocardiographic ventricular repolarization, indicating reduced repolarization reserve and possibly increased repolarization heterogeneity, is already present in hypertensive men with only mild LVM increase. At a population level, this may carry important risk implications for the large group of hypertensive patients.

In this carefully controlled study, marked individual variations in antihypertensive drug responsiveness were found to correlate to several baseline laboratory parameters. The negative correlation between serum calcium levels and amlodipine responses is intriguing and suggests an underlying mechanistic association. Collectively, our data imply that laboratory tests may have some value in prediction of the efficacy of various antihypertensive drug therapies, although great patient-to-patient variation remains an obstacle for exact predictive classification.

Varying results have been reported on the association of beta-adrenergic receptor polymorphisms with blood pressure (BP) response to beta-blockers. We investigated the influence of ADRB1 Ser49Gly and Arg389Gly, and ADRB2 Gly16Arg and Glu27Gln polymorphisms on ambulatory BP response to bisoprolol and three other antihypertensive drug monotherapies in a placebo-controlled, double-blind, cross-over study with 233 moderately hypertensive men. ADRB1 Ser49Ser homozygotes tended to have a better ambulatory BP response to bisoprolol but the difference was statistically nonsignificant. ADRB1 Arg389Arg homozygotes did not show better BP response to bisoprolol than the other genotypes. There were no significant associations of ADRB2 polymorphisms with BP responses to any of the study drugs. The results from this controlled study in hypertensive men do not support clinical use of common polymorphisms in ADRB1 and ADRB2 in predicting BP responses to beta-blockers or to three other antihypertensive drugs.

Common polymorphisms of ADD1, AGT, ACE, and AGTR1 do not markedly predict BP responses to amlodipine, bisoprolol, HCT, and losartan, at least in white hypertensive men.