Hypertension and Type 2 Diabetes

Complex traits are harder to elucidate but highly relevant for public health. The traits we are working at, type 2 diabetes and hypertension, affect more than 10% of the population and are major risk factors for cardiovascular disease, stroke, renal failure, and others.

In a sample of hypertensive patients we performed a linkage scan with 1,100 microsatellite markers and identified one region with genome-wide significance. In that sample, we also performed a genome-wide association study with 500,000 SNPs (500K Affy EA; Collaboration with CGC). An example for a region with association is shown below.

Reduced heterogeneity in isolated or founder populations – increased power

We recruit patients also from isolated or founder populations where fewer genetic variants contribute to the gene pool and thus also to the pathogenetically relevant sequence variants.