A Prediction Model of Essential Hypertension Based on Genetic and Environmental Risk Factors in Northern Han Chinese

Background: Essential hypertension (EH) is a chronic disease of universal high prevalence and a well-established independent risk factor for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events. The regulation of blood pressure is crucial for improving life quality and prognoses in patients with EH. Therefore, it is of important clinical significance to develop prediction models to recognize individuals with high risk for EH. Methods: In total, 965 subjects were recruited. Clinical parameters and genetic information, namely EH related SNPs were collected for each individual. Traditional statistic methods such as t-test, chi-square test and multi-variable logistic regression were applied to analyze baseline information. A machine learning method, mainly support vector machine (SVM), was adopted for the development of the present prediction models for EH. Results: Two models were constructed for prediction of systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), respectively. The model for SBP consists of 6 environmental factors (age, BMI, waist circumference, exercise [times per week], parental history of hypertension [either or both]) and 1 SNP (rs7305099); model for DBP consists of 6 environmental factors (weight, drinking, exercise [times per week], TG, parental history of hypertension [either and both]) and 3 SNPs (rs5193, rs7305099, rs3889728). AUC are 0.673 and 0.817 for SBP and DBP model, respectively. Conclusions: The present study identified environmental and genetic risk factors for EH in northern Han Chinese population and constructed prediction models for SBP and DBP.