Blood Pressure and Hypertension Are Associated With 7 Loci in the Japanese Population

Two consortium-based genome-wide association studies have recently identified robust and significant associations of common variants with systolic and diastolic blood pressures in populations of European descent, warranting further investigation in populations of non-European descent. We examined the associations at 27 loci reported by the genome-wide association studies on Europeans in a screening panel of Japanese subjects (n=1526) and chose 11 loci showing association signals (1-tailed test in the screening, P