Genome-Wide Interaction Analysis With DASH Diet Score Identified Novel Loci for Systolic Blood Pressure

The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet score lowers blood pressure (BP). We examined interactions between genotype and the DASH diet score in relation to systolic BP.

We analyzed up to 9 420 585 single nucleotide polymorphisms in up to 127 282 individuals of 6 population groups (91% of European population) from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology consortium (n=35 660) and UK Biobank (n=91 622) and performed European population-specific and cross-population meta-analyses.

We identified 3 loci in European-specific analyses and an additional 4 loci in cross-population analyses at P_interaction<5e-8. We observed a consistent interaction between rs117878928 at 15q25.1 (minor allele frequency, 0.03) and the DASH diet score (P_interaction=4e-8; P for heterogeneity, 0.35) in European population, where the interaction effect size was 0.42±0.09 mm Hg (P_interaction=9.4e-7) and 0.20±0.06 mm Hg (P_interaction=0.001) in Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology and the UK Biobank, respectively. The 1 Mb region surrounding rs117878928 was enriched with cis-expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) variants (P=4e-273) and cis-DNA methylation quantitative trait loci variants (P=1e-300). Although the closest gene for rs117878928 is MTHFS, the highest narrow sense heritability accounted by single nucleotide polymorphisms potentially interacting with the DASH diet score in this locus was for gene ST20 at 15q25.1.

We demonstrated gene-DASH diet score interaction effects on systolic BP in several loci. Studies with larger diverse populations are needed to validate our findings.