Genome-Wide Association Study of Blood Pressure Extremes Identifies Variant near UMOD Associated with Hypertension

Sandosh Padmanabhan, Olle Melander, Toby Johnson, Anna Maria Di Blasio, Wai K. Lee, Davide Gentilini, Claire E. Hastie, Cristina Menni, Maria Cristina Monti, Christian Delles, Stewart Laing, Barbara Corso, Gerjan Navis, Arjan J. Kwakernaak, Pim van der Harst, Murielle Bochud, Marc Maillard, Michel Burnier, Thomas Hedner, Sverre Kjeldsen Björn Wahlstrand, Marketa Sjogren, Cristiano Fava, Martina Montagnana, Elisa Danese, Ole Torffvit, Bo Hedblad, Harold Snieder, John M. C. Connell, Morris Brown, Nilesh J. Samani, Martin Farrall, Giancarlo Cesana, Giuseppe Mancia, Stefano Signorini, Guido Grassi, Susana Eyheramendy, H. Erich Wichmann, Maris Laan, David P. Strachan, Peter Sever, Denis Colm Shields, Alice Stanton, Peter Vollenweider, Alexander Teumer, Henry Voelzke, Rainer Rettig, Christopher Newton-Cheh, Pankaj Arora, Feng Zhang, Global BPgen Consortium

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    322 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Hypertension is a heritable and major contributor to the global burden of disease. The sum of rare and common genetic variants robustly identified so far explain only 1%-2% of the population variation in BP and hypertension. This suggests the existence of more undiscovered common variants. We conducted a genome-wide association study in 1,621 hypertensive cases and 1,699 controls and follow-up validation analyses in 19,845 cases and 16,541 controls using an extreme case-control design. We identified a locus on chromosome 16 in the 59 region of Uromodulin (UMOD; rs13333226, combined P value of 3.6x10(-11)). The minor G allele is associated with a lower risk of hypertension (OR [95% CI]: 0.87 [0.84-0.91]), reduced urinary uromodulin excretion, better renal function; and each copy of the G allele is associated with a 7.7% reduction in risk of CVD events after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, and smoking status (H.R. = 0.923, 95% CI 0.860-0.991; p = 0.027). In a subset of 13,446 individuals with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) measurements, we show that rs13333226 is independently associated with hypertension (unadjusted for eGFR: 0.89 [0.83-0.96], p = 0.004; after eGFR adjustment: 0.89 [0.83-0.96], p = 0.003). In clinical functional studies, we also consistently show the minor G allele is associated with lower urinary uromodulin excretion. The exclusive expression of uromodulin in the thick portion of the ascending limb of Henle suggests a putative role of this variant in hypertension through an effect on sodium homeostasis. The newly discovered UMOD locus for hypertension has the potential to give new insights into the role of uromodulin in BP regulation and to identify novel drugable targets for reducing cardiovascular risk.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbere1001177
    Pages (from-to)-
    Number of pages11
    JournalPLoS Genetics
    Volume6
    Issue number10
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Oct 2010

    Keywords

    • TAMM-HORSFALL PROTEIN
    • CHRONIC KIDNEY-DISEASE
    • URINARY-EXCRETION
    • RISK-FACTORS
    • LOCI
    • NEPHROPATHY
    • FEASIBILITY
    • MUTATIONS
    • MORTALITY
    • BURDEN

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