1. ¹Department of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA
2. ²Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
3. ³Tri-Service General Hospital, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei, Taiwan
4. ⁴National Health Research Institute, Taipei, Taiwan
5. ⁵National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
6. ⁶Division of Endocrinology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA
7. ⁷Department of Medicine, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
8. ⁸Health Research and Policy, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA
9. ⁹Hawaii Center for Health Research, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Correspondence: Koustubh Ranade, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pharmaceutical Research Institute, PO Box 5400, Princeton, NJ 08543-5400 USA. E-mail: koustubh.ranade@bms.com

^* This work was supported by grants U01 HL54527-0151 from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, NSC-85-2331-B002-350Y, NSC-86-2314-B002-345Y, and NSC-87-2312-B002-021Y from the National Science Council, Taiwan (ROC).

Received 8 January 2001; Accepted 11 June 2001.

Abstract

Background: Several studies implicate polymorphisms in the human ₂-adrenergic receptor gene (ADRB2) in the susceptibility to hypertension. We sought to replicate these results in a population of Chinese origin primarily from Taiwan and the San Francisco Bay area.

Methods: We genotyped >800 hypertensive subjects and individuals with low-normal blood pressure that were derived largely from the same families as the hypertensive patients for three polymorphisms in the ADRB2 gene: a C/T transition at position 47 (C-47T) in the 5' leader cistron; another C/T transition that results in a glycine/arginine substitution at codon 16 (Gly16Arg), and a G/C transversion that causes a glutamate/glutamine substitution at codon 27 (Glu27Gln).

Results: The Gly16Arg was significantly associated with hypertension (P < .03). Under a dominant model, for hypertension the relative risk for the Gly/Gly and Gly/Arg genotypes versus the Arg/Arg genotype was 1.35 (95% confidence limits [CL] 1.08, 1.70); for low-normal blood pressure the relative risk was 0.79 (95% CL 0.66, 0.94). This polymorphism explained approximately 1% of the variance in systolic and diastolic blood pressures in our study population. There was no evidence of association between the C-47T and Glu27Gln polymorphisms and hypertension in this population.

Conclusions: The Gly16 allele in the ₂-adrenergic receptor gene is a susceptibility allele for essential hypertension in a population of Chinese origin.