Science / Medicine : Blood Pressure Link to ‘Salt’ Gene

Researchers in California and Barbados said last week that they have found a genetic link that may explain why blacks in the Western Hemisphere suffer abnormally from high blood pressure. A “salt retention” gene or genes of African origin may be the culprit, along with the slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries, said the report from the Drew/UCLA Hypertension Research Center in Los Angeles and Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Barbados.

Clarence Grim, director of the California center, said at an American Heart Assn. meeting in Chicago that many blacks taken from Africa as slaves may have died of excessive salt loss en route to the West and in the hot and oppressive conditions they endured later. Those who survived--and from whom today’s Western Hemisphere blacks are largely descended--did so because they may have carried and passed on a gene that increases body salt and water, and with it the risk of high blood pressure.

Grim said tests were done on twins in Barbados to check the theory, using DNA analysis. The tests found that blacks with a maternal genetic African heritage had higher blood pressures than those with a non-African maternal heritage.