Genetic analyses of blood pressure traits in 140,000 admixed adults from Mexico City

Blood pressure is a major heritable determinant of cardiometabolic health, and genome-wide association studies have already identified thousands of BP-influencing variants. However, people of admixed American ancestry carry variants that are rare in other populations and remain understudied in GWAS.

This study performed GWAS of four BP traits in 140,559 participants from the Mexico City Prospective Study. Conditional analyses identified 78 independent signals for systolic BP, 61 for diastolic BP, 88 for mean arterial pressure, and 24 for pulse pressure. A trans-ancestry meta-analysis externally replicated 13 novel signals, and six additional signals replicated in an AMR-ancestry meta-analysis. The authors also found significant heterogeneity between AMR and other ancestries at nine loci.

Functional integration analyses implicated the heart, arterial tree, adrenal glands, and kidney in BP regulation, while analyses of exome-sequenced rare variants identified genes that may act through kidney and endothelial function. Overall, the results underscore the value of including diverse populations in genetic discovery.