Genetics of human essential hypertension: review

Essential hypertension is a common multifactorial disorder, resulting from a combined effect of the predisposing genetic and environmental risk factors. This review summarizes the collective efforts of epidemiologists, clinicians and molecular geneticists to unravel the genetic complexity of hypertension. The multifaceted approach to modern hypertension research that combines the tools of contemporary genetics and molecular biology, such as genome-wide analysis of genes and transcripts, with classical whole-animal physiological models of disease and the wealth of clinical observations, is discussed