Adopting a healthy lifestyle has beneficial effects on lowering blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular risk, regardless of an individual's genetic predisposition to raised BP. In a study involving 277,005 individuals from the UK Biobank, investigators scored the participants according to both lifestyle factors (BMI, diet, alcohol consumption, smoking status, sodium excretion, and sedentary behaviour) and a genetic risk score involving 314 loci associated with high BP. A healthy lifestyle was strongly and inversely correlated with systolic and diastolic BP levels and with incident cardiovascular disease (P < 10−320 for each). Participants with a healthy lifestyle had approximately 3.5 mmHg lower systolic BP and 30–33% lower risk of cardiovascular disease across the low, medium, and high genetic risk groups compared with those with an unfavourable lifestyle. “Given the importance of population-wide lifestyle modification, the use of genetic information for risk stratification merits careful evaluation before it is routinely implemented in clinical practice,” conclude the researchers.
References
Pazoki, R. et al. Genetic predisposition to high blood pressure and lifestyle factors: association with midlife blood pressure levels and cardiovascular events. Circulation 137, 653–661 (2018)
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Lim, G. Lifestyle offsets genetic risk of hypertension. Nat Rev Cardiol 15, 196 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrcardio.2018.15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrcardio.2018.15