Detection of putative functional SNPs in blood pressure loci and validation of association between SNP in WBP1L and hypertension in the Chinese Han population.

We have performed a gene-based association study and detected several important blood pressure (BP)-associated genes. In this study we explored functional variants in these genes by bioinformatics analysis and validated the associations between the functional SNPs and hypertension with public data and our in-house data of 857 cases and 927 controls. We found various functional variants in the BP-associated genes, including missense mutations, phosphorylation-related SNPs. Most of these SNPs were associated with expressions of the local genes. Some of these SNPs were associated with coronary artery disease or ischemic stroke. The associations between 12 functional SNPs in 7 genes and BP were validated (P < 5 × 10). The intronic SNP rs176185, which may influence promoter histone, enhancer histone, DNase and regulatory motifs and showed cis-eQTL effect on WBP1L, was associated with hypertension in the Chinese Han population (P = 0.0119). Our study detected plenty of potential functional SNPs in the BP-associated genes and demonstrated that rs176185 may be associated with hypertension in the Chinese Han population.