Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Review
  • Published:

Renin angiotensinogen system gene polymorphisms and essential hypertension among people of West African descent: a systematic review

Journal of Human Hypertension volume 30, pages 467–478 (2016)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

This systematic review investigates the high level of hypertension found among urban dwellers in West Africa and in the West African Diaspora in the Americas in relation to variants within the genes encoding the renin angiotensinogen system. For comparison, the results from the Caucasian populations are reviewed as well. Through a PubMed search, 1252 articles were identified and 28 eligible articles assessed in detail of which 13 included a Caucasian population. The results suggest that among the people of West African descent and among the people of Caucasian descent, hypertension is partly related to a number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and haplotypes in the renin gene, the angiotensinogen gene, the angiotensinogen I-converting enzyme gene and the angiotensinogen II type 1 receptor gene. Concordance between these two populations was found for some SNPs. However, for others, it was found that the SNPs associating with hypertension and the disease allele frequencies differed between these populations. Understanding the importance of these variants in a modern life setting may assist our understanding of the increased risk of developing hypertension among West Africans. Because of inconsistency in the results, low statistical power and methodological differences between studies, these results can only be taken as indicative of an association.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1
Figure 2

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Cowley AW Jr., Nadeau JH, Baccarelli A, Berecek K, Fornage M, Gibbons GH et al. Report of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Working Group on epigenetics and hypertension. Hypertension 2012; 59 (5): 899–905.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. WHO. A Global Brief on Hypertension. 2013 Ref Type: Generic.

  3. Keenan NL, Rosendorf KA . Prevalence of hypertension and controlled hypertension - United States, 2005–2008. MMWR Surveill Summ 2011; 60 (Suppl): 94–97.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Gleiberman L . Sodium, blood pressure, and ethnicity: what have we learned? Am J Hum Biol 2009; 21 (5): 679–686.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Fejerman L, Wu X, Adeyemo A, Luke A, Zhu X, Hicks C et al. The effect of genetic variation in angiotensinogen on serum levels and blood pressure: a comparison of Nigerians and US blacks. J Hum Hypertens 2006; 20 (11): 882–887.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Wu X, Luke A, Rieder M, Lee K, Toth EJ, Nickerson D et al. An association study of angiotensinogen polymorphisms with serum level and hypertension in an African-American population. J Hypertens 2003; 21 (10): 1847–1852.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Daniel HI, Rotimi CN . Genetic epidemiology of hypertension: an update on the African diaspora. Ethn Dis 2003; 13 (2 Suppl 2): S53–S66.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Daniel HI, Munroe PB, Lawson M, Fogarty P, Kamdar SM, Caulfield MJ . Investigation of the renin gene as a putative locus for essential hypertension (EH) in Vincentian African Caribbeans. J Hum Hypertens 1994; 8 (8): 609–610.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Zhu X, Chang YP, Yan D, Weder A, Cooper R, Luke A et al. Associations between hypertension and genes in the renin-angiotensin system. Hypertension 2003; 41 (5): 1027–1034.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Bloem LJ, Foroud TM, Ambrosius WT, Hanna MP, Tewksbury DA, Pratt JH . Association of the angiotensinogen gene to serum angiotensinogen in blacks and whites. Hypertension 1997; 29 (5): 1078–1082.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Bloem LJ, Manatunga AK, Tewksbury DA, Pratt JH . The serum angiotensinogen concentration and variants of the angiotensinogen gene in white and black children. J Clin Invest 1995; 95 (3): 948–953.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Caulfield M, Lavender P, Newell-Price J, Farrall M, Kamdar S, Daniel H et al. Linkage of the angiotensinogen gene locus to human essential hypertension in African Caribbeans. J Clin Invest 1995; 96 (2): 687–692.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Forrester T, McFarlane-Anderson N, Bennet F, Wilks R, Puras A, Cooper R et al. Angiotensinogen and blood pressure among blacks: findings from a community survey in Jamaica. J Hypertens 1996; 14 (3): 315–321.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Jain S, Tang X, Narayanan CS, Agarwal Y, Peterson SM, Brown CD et al. Angiotensinogen gene polymorphism at -217 affects basal promoter activity and is associated with hypertension in African-Americans. J Biol Chem 2002; 277 (39): 36889–36896.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Kumar A, Li Y, Patil S, Jain S . A haplotype of the angiotensinogen gene is associated with hypertension in african americans. Clin Exp Pharmacol Physiol 2005; 32 (5–6): 495–502.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Markovic D, Tang X, Guruju M, Levenstien MA, Hoh J, Kumar A et al. Association of angiotensinogen gene polymorphisms with essential hypertension in African-Americans and Caucasians. Hum Hered 2005; 60 (2): 89–96.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Rotimi C, Cooper R, Ogunbiyi O, Morrison L, Ladipo M, Tewksbury D et al. Hypertension, serum angiotensinogen, and molecular variants of the angiotensinogen gene among Nigerians. Circulation 1997; 95 (10): 2348–2350.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Rotimi C, Morrison L, Cooper R, Oyejide C, Effiong E, Ladipo M et al. Angiotensinogen gene in human hypertension. Lack of an association of the 235T allele among African Americans. Hypertension 1994; 24 (5): 591–594.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Taylor JY, Sampson D, Taylor AD, Caldwell D, Sun YV . Genetic and BMI risks for predicting blood pressure in three generations of West African Dogon women. Biol Res Nurs 2013; 15 (1): 105–111.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Velez DR, Guruju M, Vinukonda G, Prater A, Kumar A, Williams SM . Angiotensinogen promoter sequence variants in essential hypertension. Am J Hypertens 2006; 19 (12): 1278–1285.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Wang X, Zhu H, Dong Y, Treiber FA, Snieder H . Effects of angiotensinogen and angiotensin II type I receptor genes on blood pressure and left ventricular mass trajectories in multiethnic youth. Twin Res Hum Genet 2006; 9 (3): 393–402.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Whitfield KE, Yao X, Boomer KB, Vogler GP, Hayward MD, Vandenbergh DJ . Analysis of candidate genes and hypertension in African American adults. Ethn Dis 2009; 19 (1): 18–22.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  23. Kamdar S, Daniel H, Fogarty P, Lawson M, Munroe P, Caulfield M . ACE insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism in Vincentian African Caribbeans with essential hypertension. J Hum Hypertens 1994; 8 (8): 611.

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Asamoah A, Yanamandra K, Thurmon TF, Richter R, Green R, Lakin T et al. A deletion in the angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) gene is common among African Americans with essential hypertension. Clin Chim Acta 1996; 254 (1): 41–46.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Bloem LJ, Manatunga AK, Pratt JH . Racial difference in the relationship of an angiotensin I-converting enzyme gene polymorphism to serum angiotensin I-converting enzyme activity. Hypertension 1996; 27 (1): 62–66.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  26. Companioni NO, Sautie CM, Leal L, Casalvilla R, Camacho H, Ferrer A et al. ACE I/D polymorphism study in a Cuban hypertensive population. Clin Chim Acta 2007; 378 (1–2): 112–116.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Duru K, Farrow S, Wang JM, Lockette W, Kurtz T . Frequency of a deletion polymorphism in the gene for angiotensin converting enzyme is increased in African-Americans with hypertension. Am J Hypertens 1994; 7 (8): 759–762.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  28. Henderson SO, Haiman CA, Mack W . Multiple Polymorphisms in the renin- angiotensin-aldosterone system (ACE, CYP11B2, AGTR1) and their contribution to hypertension in African Americans and Latinos in the multiethnic cohort. Am J Med Sci 2004; 328 (5): 266–273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Ned RM, Yesupriya A, Imperatore G, Smelser DT, Moonesinghe R, Chang MH et al. The ACE I/D polymorphism in US adults: limited evidence of association with hypertension-related traits and sex-specific effects by race/ethnicity. Am J Hypertens 2012; 25 (2): 209–215.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  30. Zhu X, Bouzekri N, Southam L, Cooper RS, Adeyemo A, McKenzie CA et al. Linkage and association analysis of angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE)-gene polymorphisms with ACE concentration and blood pressure. Am J Hum Genet 2001; 68 (5): 1139–1148.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Bouzekri N, Zhu X, Jiang Y, McKenzie CA, Luke A, Forrester T et al. Angiotensin I-converting enzyme polymorphisms, ACE level and blood pressure among Nigerians, Jamaicans and African-Americans. Eur J Hum Genet 2004; 12 (6): 460–468.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  32. Barbeau P, Kulharya A, Harshfield G, Snieder H, Davis H, Treiber F . Association between angiotensin II type I receptor polymorphism and resting hemodynamics in black and white youth. Ethn Dis 2002; 12 (1): S1–S71.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  33. Hindorff LA, Heckbert SR, Tracy R, Tang Z, Psaty BM, Edwards KL et al. Angiotensin II type 1 receptor polymorphisms in the cardiovascular health study: relation to blood pressure, ethnicity, and cardiovascular events. Am J Hypertens 2002; 15 (12): 1050–1056.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  34. Adeyemo A, Gerry N, Chen G, Herbert A, Doumatey A, Huang H et al. A genome-wide association study of hypertension and blood pressure in African Americans. PLoS Genet 2009; 5 (7): e1000564.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Fox ER, Young JH, Li Y, Dreisbach AW, Keating BJ, Musani SK et al. Association of genetic variation with systolic and diastolic blood pressure among African Americans: the Candidate Gene Association Resource study. Hum Mol Genet 2011; 20 (11): 2273–2284.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  36. Johnson T, Gaunt TR, Newhouse SJ, Padmanabhan S, Tomaszewski M, Kumari M et al. Blood pressure loci identified with a gene-centric array. Am J Hum Genet 2011; 89 (6): 688–700.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  37. Feng T, Elston RC, Zhu X . Detecting rare and common variants for complex traits: sibpair and odds ratio weighted sum statistics (SPWSS, ORWSS). Genet Epidemiol 2011; 35 (5): 398–409.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Professor Ib C Bygbjerg at the University of Copenhagen for his comments on early drafts of this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health, Global Health Section, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    L M Reiter & D L Christensen

  2. The Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, Section of Metabolic Genetics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    A P Gjesing

Authors
  1. L M Reiter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. D L Christensen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. A P Gjesing
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to L M Reiter.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Supplementary Information accompanies this paper on the Journal of Human Hypertension website

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Reiter, L., Christensen, D. & Gjesing, A. Renin angiotensinogen system gene polymorphisms and essential hypertension among people of West African descent: a systematic review. J Hum Hypertens 30, 467–478 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/jhh.2015.114

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/jhh.2015.114

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links