Comparative genetico-mathematic analysis of essential hypertension and coronary heart disease mode of inheritance: a study using direct methods testing.
Essential hypertension (EH) and coronary heart disease (CHD) very often exhibit familial recurrence pattern, which are estimated in the Bulgarian population at 63.11% for EH and at 48.90% for CHD. The author made comparative genetico-mathematical analysis of the inheritance patterns of the two diseases. Examining the pedigrees from a large number of families two data sets were formed and analyzed separately: a subgroup of families of probands with phenotypically unaffected parents, in which the genealogical pattern was most often consistent with a recessive model of inheritance and a subgroup of families of probands with one or both parents affected, in which the pedigree analysis resembled that of a disease with a monogenic dominant model of inheritance. The segregation coefficients obtained in the subgroup of families with two healthy parents most often varied from 0.298 to 0.362--results that consistently reject the hypothesis of recessive inheritance; the respective coefficients obtained by the same direct methods in the subgroup of families with one or both parents affected showed values from 0.279 to 0.468--findings rejecting the hypothesis of dominant model of inheritance. The author pointed out the identical relationships exhibited by genetico-mathematical testing of EH and CHD, a fact demonstrating the significant genetic proximity between the two diseases. Conclusions are made about the complex and specific relationships between genetic and environmental risk factors in the two diseases.