Evidence for a familial pregnancy-induced hypertension locus in the eNOS-gene region.

Summary Pregnancy-induced hypertension may be regarded as a manifestation of endothelial-cell dysfunction. The role of the eNOS gene in the development of a familial pregnancy-induced hypertension was evaluated by analysis of linkage among affected sisters and in multiplex families ( n = 50). Markers from a 4-cM region encoding the eNOS gene showed distortion from the expected allele sharing among affected sisters ( P = .001−.05), and the statistic obtained from the multilocus application of the affected-pedigree-member method also showed distortion ( T [f(P) = sqrt(P)] = 3.53; P P = .005). These results support the localization of a familial pregnancy-induced hypertension—susceptibility locus in the region of chromosome 7q36 encoding the eNOS gene.