Potential genetic biomarkers are found to be associated with both cognitive function and blood pressure: A bivariate genome-wide association analysis

Abstract

A bivariate genome-wide association study was conducted in 137 pairs of twins to explore the shared genetic loci between cognition and blood pressure (BP). Before SNPs imputation, rs72815554 is significantly (P < 5 × 10−8) associated with the cognition-pulse pressure (PP) phenotype, while after imputation, 4 and 9 SNPs are significantly associated with the cognition-SBP phenotype, and cognition-PP phenotype, respectively, including rs72815554. There existed SNPs with highly linkage disequilibrium (LD) of rs10998339, rs72815554, rs11665292, and rs10823231. Besides, rs10998347, rs12153038, and rs10998295 had higher RegulomeDB scores and are located in the transcription factors binding regions. Rs7574283 and rs58113664 are located in the super-enhancer regions which are expressed highly in the adrenal gland, artery, atrial tissue, brain, nerves, etc. There are 1108, 1154, 1071, and 1102 genes associated with cognition-SBP, cognition-DBP, cognition-PP, and cognition-mean arterial pressure (MAP) phenotypes at the suggestive significant association level (P < 0.05), respectively. Furthermore, 641, 630, 900, and 555 pathways are associated with cognition-SBP, cognition-DBP, cognition-PP, and cognition-MAP phenotypes at the suggestive significant association level (P < 0.05), respectively.