[Genes and kidney disease. Candidate genes]

Molecular biology techniques have provided important advances in the search for causal relationships in complex diseases supporting traditional epidemiologic studies. Genetic epidemiology allows us to detect genetic variants that could be related to the onset and progression of different diseases. In cardiovascular and renal diseases, this approach linking traditional risk factors to new described ones and those allelic variants, which contribute to the development of these manifestations permits a better understanding of individual disease susceptibility. This is usually afforded through case-control studies evaluating allelic variants of candidate genes previously associated with the disease. Even in this candidate gene search, association-based methods are more powerful than linkage studies in complex traits if we assume that some of the typed polymorphisms are causative although with subtle phenotypic effects. Some brief examples may illustrate the progress in the understanding of renal and cardiovascular diseases.