Genetic Determinants of Hypertension and Insulin Resistance

The Stanford Asia–Pacific Program for Hypertension and Insulin Resistance (SAPPHIRe) is a collaborative family study sponsored by the Family Blood Pressure Program of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. The study was conducted to identify the genetic determinant of hypertension and insulin resistance in participants of Chinese ancestry. The study collected sibling pairs of over 1144 participants from 360 nuclear families who were either concordant or discordant for high blood pressure as previously described [24 (link)]. The definition of high blood pressure was systolic blood pressure > 140 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure > 90 mm Hg or with two medications for hypertension. Blood pressure in the bottom 30% of age- and sex-adjusted blood pressure distributions was defined as low-normal blood pressure. Individuals with heart, liver, or kidney diseases or chronic diseases such as diabetes or cancer were excluded. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards/Research Ethics Review Committee including National Taiwan University Hospital, National Health Research Institutes, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, and Tri-Service General Hospital. All participants signed informed consent. All procedures were conducted according to principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. The detailed analysis is shown in Additional file 1.