A new study has discovered the genetic cause of a rare high blood pressure syndrome.<\/p>\n
Professor Ute Scholl and a team of scientists from the United States and Australia have now identified a new hypertension disease gene.<\/p>\n
The study focused on a particular and very rare form of high blood pressure, known as familial hyper aldosteronism type II.<\/p>\n
This inherited disease causes the adrenal gland to produce high level of aldosterone – a hormone that regulates the water and salt conservation in the kidneys.<\/p>\n
Excess of this hormone in the body shoots up the blood pressure.<\/p>\n
According to the research, more than a billion people worldwide suffer from hypertension or high blood pressure. Such a condition, if prolonged, damages<\/p>\n
blood vessels, which can result in damage to the heart, the kidneys, and the brain.<\/p>\n
Possible consequences may include heart attack, kidney failure and stroke. Besides obesity, salt consumption and alcohol intake, genetic factors play an<\/p>\n
important role in the development of hypertension.<\/p>\n
In some rare cases, familial hypertension is caused by mutations within single genes. These genes play important roles in blood pressure determination. These<\/p>\n
mutations typically cause early-onset hypertension, even in young children and adolescents.<\/p>\n
Type II of familial hyperaldosteronism was first described in an Australian family 25 years ago. The research team investigated this family along with other<\/p>\n
patients suffering from hyperaldosteronism in childhood and adolescence.<\/p>\n
A total of eight families, including the large Australian family, showed mutations in a gene that had not previously been associated with blood pressure<\/p>\n
regulation. The CLCN2 gene carries information for building a channel in the cell membrane through which chloride ions can pass.<\/p>\n
In specific cells of the adrenal gland, these chloride channels regulate membrane voltage and aldosterone production. Gene mutations in patients with familial<\/p>\n
hyperaldosteronism cause changes in the membrane voltage and result in the overproduction of aldosterone, which raises blood pressure.<\/p>\n
The findings from this study have been published in the scientific journal Nature Genetics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new study has discovered the genetic cause of a rare high blood pressure syndrome. Professor Ute Scholl and a team of scientists from the United States and Australia have now identified a new hypertension disease gene. The study focused on a particular and very rare form of high blood pressure, known as familial hyper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22551,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22549\/revisions\/22551"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}