Essential Hypertension and Histocompatibility Antigens. A Linkage Study

It is well established that genetic and environmental factors are involved in the etiology of essential hypertension. The presence of genes predisposing to essential hypertension in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex is controversial because studies of an association between HLA antigens and essential hypertension have failed to yield consistent results. Our aim in the present study was to further investigate this issue through the method of linkage analysis. Analysis of 96 hypertensive siblings distributed in 31 families indicated a significant distortion (p = 0.0009) of the normal segregation pattern of inheritance of HLA haplotypes. Thus, our data indicate that at least one of the genes responsible for genetic predisposition to essential hypertension is located very near or within the HLA complex.