Association of Renin BglI Polymphism with Essential Hypertension: A Meta-Analysis Involving 1811 Cases and 1626 Controls

Abstract

In an effort to clarify association of an intronic polymorphism BglI in a renin gene with essential hypertension, we performed a meta-analysis of the case-control association studies. Publications in the English language and human subjects were searched in PubMed and EMBASE as of July 10, 2009. A fixed-effects model was applied to pool data in the absence of between-studies heterogeneity, and a random-effects model otherwise. Data and study quality were assessed in duplicate. Publication bias was evaluated using the fail-safe number. From three studies with four populations including 1811 patients with essential hypertension and 1626 controls, we found a significant association of renin BglI B with an increased risk for essential hypertension (OR = 1.25; 95% CI, 1.11 to 1.41; P = 0.0002). In addition, significance persisted after assuming the dominant (OR = 1.30; 95% CI, 1.13 to 1.51; P = 0.0004) mode of inheritance, while no significance was observed for the recessive mode (OR = 1.46; 95% CI, 0.82 to 2.60; P = 0.20). The fail-safe number at the level of 0.05 supported these significant associations. In sum, our meta-analysis expands previous findings by showing that the presence of renin BglI B allele is associated with an increased risk in developing essential hypertension, and this effect might act in a dominant mode of inheritance. Further studies are warranted to fully address questions about the etiologic mechanisms of this positive association.

• renin
• BglI polymorphism
• essential hypertension
• meta-analysis
• association

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This work was financially supported by the Shanghai “Chen Guang” Project (09CG12), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (09ZR1426200, 08ZR1422000), two Excellent Young Teachers Programs, one from Ruijin Hospital (WN) and the other from Shanghai City (WN), the Science Fund of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine (09XJ21019), Shanghai Education Committee (09YZ101), and the National Science Foundation for Young Scientists of China (grant number 30900808).

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.