Research finds that hypertension-related genes impact blood pressure from a young age, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease as you become older. PhD Candidate Karsten Ovretveit at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Public Health and Nursing said, “We are talking about really small differences, so small that they may fall within what is considered normal blood pressure. The problem is that they tend to last your whole life.”
The study shows that high blood pressure occurs in all age groups and that it is related to hereditary factors. Ovretveit said, “We found that genetic factors affect blood pressure from the first years of childhood and throughout your entire life. Lifestyle diseases are often caused by a combination of heredity and environment. Diseases are often the result of not only one but very many genetic variants.”
“By keeping their blood pressure at a low level, people with a high genetic risk score can achieve a lower risk of disease than people diagnosed with high blood pressure who we consider genetically protected,” Ovretveit said.
The researchers utilised health data obtained from participants in the HUNT Study from Trondelag and the British 'Children of the 90s' study to investigate the importance of genetic risk factors. The latter study encompasses health information from nearly 14,000 children, tracked from birth into their twenties.
Through comparing the blood pressure levels of children with the highest genetic risk to those with the lowest risk, the researchers observed that the average blood pressure in the former group began to surpass that of the latter as early as age three.
