Genetic analysis of kallikrein‐kinin system in the Korean hypertensives

The kallikrein‐kinin system affects regulation of blood pressure, and genes encoding for the components of this system have been considered as good candidates for hypertension. To evaluate the relationship between genetic polymorphisms of candidate genes involved in this system and hypertension, we performed case‐control studies using genetic markers in Korean normotensives and hypertensives, respectively. By association study, there was a marginal association with hypertension in AA genotype distribution of A1789G polymorphism in the hKLK1 gene (P=0.0754). Thus, this genetic polymorphism may weakly contribute to the susceptibility to hypertension in Koreans. We also observed that significant linkage disequilibrium exists among three polymorphic sites in the hKLK1 gene studied, suggesting that the three genetic polymorphisms can be useful as genetic markers in clinical association studies. Further studies using larger sample sizes and more genetic markers will be needed to clarify genetic influence of kallikrein‐kinin system for hypertension.