Genome-wide linkage analysis of the tracking of systolic blood pressure using a mixed model

Elevated blood pressure in middle age is a major risk factor for subsequent cardiovascular complications. An important longitudinal characteristic of blood pressure is the "tracking phenomenon". Tracking is defined as the persistence of the rank of a person's blood pressure level in a group over a long period of time. In this analysis, we used the Framingham data to investigate whether there are some genes responsible for this phenomenon.

Both two-point and multipoint linkage analyses were applied to family members with complete data only and to all family data with missing values imputed by a Gaussian model. The results of two-point linkage analysis indicated that two loci for linkage with the intercept were on chromosomes 10 and 13, and two loci for linkage with both slope and intercept were on chromosomes 1 and 3. Multipoint linkage analysis indicated only one region, 200-240 cM on chromosome 1, to be linked with both intercept and slope. For the intercept of SBP, the highest LOD (4.43) was found at 214 cM when missing data were imputed, and the highest LOD (2.81) was at 231 cM for the complete case data. For the slope of SBP, the highest multipoint LODs were 3.63 at 227 cM and 2.02 at 234 cM for the complete case data and imputation data, respectively.

One or more genes in the range of 200-240 cM on chromosome 1 may be related to the tracking phenomenon of SBP.