ScaI Atrial Natriuretic Peptide Gene Polymorphism and Hypertension in the Tunisian Population

Numerous genetic variants have been linked to hypertension. Among these variants T2238C polymorphism in atrial natriuretic peptide gene has been investigated in the pathogeneses of hypertension, but studies have often generated controversial results. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between hypertension and the ANP/ T2238C variant gene that led to the loss of ScaI restriction site, thus eliminated the regular stop codon and involved an extension of the human ANP by two additional arginines. We genotyped 384 patients with hypertension and 435 healthy controls. The ScaI ANP gene polymorphism was determined by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. The results shows that the ScaI ANP gene polymorphism genotypes distribution and allele frequencies were not significantly different between the hypertensive and normotensive subjects (p>0.05). The frequencies of A2 wild allele and A1 mutant allele were 48% and 52% respectively in hypertensive patients and 49% and 51% in control group (p=0.66). This polymorphism is not associated with hypertension (OR= 1.55, 95% CI [0.82-2.92]; p=0.17) for TC and (OR=1.80, 95% CI [0.81-3.98]; p=0.14) for CC after adjustment for age, gender, body mass index, fasting glucose concentration, dyslipidemia and smoking. Furthermore, no relationship was found between clinical characteristics and ScaI ANP genotypes. As a conclusion; this study suggested that the ScaI ANP gene polymorphism is not associated with hypertension in the Tunisian population.