The Genetics of Quantitative Traits Associated with Cardiovascular Disease in African Americans

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in most developed countries. In addition to environmental risk factors, such as diet and physical activity, genetic risk factors contribute to the CVD risk. Risk of CVD is not uniformly distributed across populations, as African Americans and Hispanics have more risk factors for CVD compared with European Americans. The use of quantitative traits to identify genetic risk factors is a potentially more powerful, informative and uniform approach compared with the use of binary or qualitative traits (such as CVD case status). My primary objective is to identify genetic risk factors associated with the regulation fibrinogen/hematological and electrocardiogram (ECG) traits in African Americans. Both fibrinogen/hematological and ECG traits are common clinical characteristics of CVD and have a strong genetic component. The primary objective of this work is to identify genetic risk factors associated with the regulation fibrinogen/hematological and electrocardiogram (ECG) traits in African Americans. Both fibrinogen/hematological and ECG traits are common clinical characteristics of CVD and have a strong genetic component. Using three approaches: candidate gene, genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and testing for genetic interactions (gene-gene and gene-environment); we identify novel and previously identified genetic associations with ECG traits and fibrinogen/hematological traits in African Americans and other global populations.