People with high blood pressure may have a variant in a gene involved in how the kidneys process salt, according to researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The STK39 gene, which produces a protein that helps regulate how salt is processed, is the first hypertension susceptibility gene to be uncovered through a new technique called a genome-wide association study.
The discovery, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has potential for individualized treatments, said senior author Yen-Pei Christy Chang, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology and preventive medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Researchers identified the link by analyzing the DNA of the Old Order Amish community in Lancaster County, Pa.
Multiple genes are likely involved in hypertension, the most common form of high blood pressure. However, it’s been hard to pinpoint a specific gene or group of genes because many factors affect blood pressure, such as diet and exercise, researchers said.
Chang said more research is needed to determine how people with this gene variant respond to medications or lifestyle changes.
Hopkins researchers find reason behind prostate cancer treatment failure
Johns Hopkins researchers have found what they say is the culprit behind the failure of the common prostate cancer treatment.
Prostate cancer cells rely on androgens, which are male hormones, to survive and grow. For nearly 70 years, patients have been treated by depriving them of androgens, either chemically or by castration.
This hormone deprivation therapy causes tumors to shrink temporarily, but they eventually regrow even stronger and resistant to this therapy, researchers said.
Researchers found that androgen receptors on the prostate cancer cells may be causing the therapy to fail, according to findings published in the Jan. 1 issue of Cancer Research.
The therapy may be encouraging cancer cells to overproduce variations in the receptors, leading them to survive and grow aggressively even without androgens, said Jun Luo, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins’ James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute.
The findings could lead to ways to track disease progression and new targets to fight the cancer, researchers said.
Hopkins School of Medicine researchers were joined by the University of Washington and Puget Sound VA Medical Center for this study.
