Heritability of ambulatory and office blood pressure phenotypes in Swedish families

Abstract

We conclude that ambulatory blood pressure, in particular at night, seems better than office blood pressure to capture the heritable part of blood pressure, suggesting that ambulatory blood pressure may be a more exact estimate of an individual's true blood pressure. Genetic studies using ambulatory blood pressure as the phenotype are likely to be more powerful than those using office blood pressure. The high heritability of pulse pressure ambulatory blood pressure indicates that variation in arterial stiffness in subjects free from antihypertensive medication is strongly affected by genetic factors.

Genome-wide linkage and association scans for pulse pressure in Chinese twins

“…An even higher heritability estimate of 0.63 was reported by a Swedish study. 11 A recent analysis of our Chinese twin data showed a heritability estimate of 0.45 (unpublished data), which is consistent with the American and African data. These results indicate that, similar to all other complex traits, the etiology of PP can be complicated due to the involvement of both genetic and environmental dissections.…”

Genetic influence on blood pressure measured in the office, under laboratory stress and during real life

“…Because ABP is a better predictor of target organ damage, cardiovascular morbidity and mortality than office BP, 6–8 it is of great interest to know whether 24-h BP will be a better phenotype than office BP to find genes for EH. To date, four twin studies 25–28 and three family studies 29–31 have reported heritability estimates for 24-h ABP recording. However, only three studies 25,30,31 reported the heritability estimates both for office and 24-h BP, with two family studies 30,31 observing higher heritability and one twin study observing similar heritability for 24-h BP.…”

“…To date, four twin studies 25–28 and three family studies 29–31 have reported heritability estimates for 24-h ABP recording. However, only three studies 25,30,31 reported the heritability estimates both for office and 24-h BP, with two family studies 30,31 observing higher heritability and one twin study observing similar heritability for 24-h BP. 25 For example, in the study by Fava et al ., 31 which included 260 siblings from 118 Swedish families, the heritability was 30% for 24-h SBP and 29% for 24-h DBP, whereas the heritability estimates for office BP were not significantly different from zero.…”

“…However, only three studies 25,30,31 reported the heritability estimates both for office and 24-h BP, with two family studies 30,31 observing higher heritability and one twin study observing similar heritability for 24-h BP. 25 For example, in the study by Fava et al ., 31 which included 260 siblings from 118 Swedish families, the heritability was 30% for 24-h SBP and 29% for 24-h DBP, whereas the heritability estimates for office BP were not significantly different from zero. In the study by Bochud et al ., 30 which included 314 subjects from 76 AA pedigrees, the heritability was 40% for 24-h SBP and 28% for 24-h DBP, whereas it was only 20% for office SBP and 5% for office DBP.…”

“…However, there are three caveats. First, these two family studies 30,31 might be underpowered to detect the heritability of office BP. Previous family and twin studies have established that office BP is heritable, 1 whereas both of these two studies failed to detect a significant heritability for office BP.…”