Genetics and Epigenetics of Cardiovascular Disease

National Heart, Lung, And Blood Institute

Investigators

Abstract

One study nested in GENE-FORECAST has been initiated: - Sodium Intervention Trial (SIT) The objective of this study is to implement a sodium intervention assessing the effect of increased dietary sodium intake on changes in blood pressure, vascular function, microbiome, whole blood epigenome, whole blood and urine transcriptome as outcome measures. The study design will include a double-blind, cross-over treatment/placebo trial among 40 former African Americans GENEFORECAST participants with normal blood pressure and will last 7 weeks. It is hypothesized that exposure to increased dietary sodium will affect blood pressure, whole blood epigenome, whole blood and urine transcriptome, vascular function, microbiome and blood pressure. - Analyses We will use an analytical framework which uses both conventional statistical and Machine Learning techniques to integrate the GENE FORECAST data sources and provide a more comprehensive picture of the traits of interest and the interplay between the underlying determinants. The framework makes use of data already collected as part of MH-GRID, GENE-FORECAST and other studies. This analytical framework is being used in the current projects listed below. (1) MicroRNA study of Metabolic Healthy Obesity (2) Social Disadvantage, Gene Expression and Depressive Symptoms in African Americans from MH-GRID (3) Exome-wide association study (EWAS) of 8 cardiometabolic traits (4) Developing a transcriptome-informed polygenic risk score of reduced kidney function in African Americans with hypertension (5) Developing a transcriptome-informed polygenic risk score of hypertension in African Americans (6) Whole-blood Transcriptome study of Coronary Artery Calcium (7) Transcriptome signature of sodium intake in and links to cardiovascular traits (8) Transcriptome and proteome study of Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC)