Differential Gene Expression Profile in Essential Hypertension

Essential hypertension affects 20-30% of the population worldwide and contributes significantly to mortality and morbidity[1] from cerebrovascular diseases, myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure and renal insufficiency. Essential hypertension is a prevalent disorder that leads to significant morbidity and mortality. Essential hypertension is defined as chronically elevated arterial pressure resulting from an unknown etiology. Intrinsically, it is a complex, heterogeneous, multifactorial syndrome to which environmental factors are partly responsible for. A lineup of aberrant environmental factors, including dietary salt intake[2,3,4], body weight[5,6], physical inactivity[7.8], physical stress[9.10], cigarette smoking [11-14], alcohol consumption[15-18] and inadequate potassium consumption[19,20] contribute to essential hypertension, possibly by infuriating genetically programmed susceptibilities. Results from twins, adoptive and population studies suggest high degree of similarity of blood pressure values, thus indicating the importance of genetic variables in essential hypertension etiology[21-25]. It is assumed that blood pressure is under the control of a large number of genes each of which has only relatively mild effects.