Association of essential hypertension in elderly Japanese with I/D polymorphism of the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) gene.
Recent evidence suggests that an insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the gene encoding angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) is associated with myocardial infarction and related cardiovascular diseases. We investigated a possible association of the ACE polymorphism with essential hypertension in a total of 263 cases/controls from among the elderly (age, over 70 years) and middle-aged (age between 30 and 60 years) Japanese population. The frequency of the I/I homozygote was significantly higher in hypertensive subjects than in controls in the elderly age group (33/57 vs 16/46; P = 0.02), but no association was observed in the middle-aged group (25/75 vs 26/85; P = 0.71). Similarly, having at least one insertion allele was associated with essential hypertension in the elderly age group (83/114 vs 46/92 in controls; P = 0.001), but not in the middle-aged group (78/150 vs 94/170; P = 0.524). These data suggest that genetic variation at the ACE locus may be associated with some determinants for blood pressure in elderly persons, and imply the involvement of the ACE insertion/deletion polymorphism in the etiology of age-related essential hypertension in the Japanese population.
Yoshida
K
K
Second Department of Internal Medicine, Yokohama City University School of Medicine, Japan.
Ishigami
T
T
Nakazawa
I
I
Ohno
A
A
Tamura
K
K
Fukuoka
M
M
Mizushima
S
S
Umemura
S
S
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001483:Base Sequence; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D017931:DNA Primers; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000235:genetics*; D008875:Middle Aged; D007703:Peptidyl-Dipeptidase A / Q000235:genetics*; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic
D017931:DNA Primers; D007703:Peptidyl-Dipeptidase A