Heritability and genetic linkage of left ventricular mass, systolic and diastolic function in hypertensive African Americans (From the GENOA Study).

Background: Much of the interindividual variation in left ventricular (LV) structure and function is unexplained by established risk factors and may be due to novel or genetic factors. We used pedigree information from 454 tandem markers across the genome to estimate the heritability and linkage of various echocardiographic measures of LV structure and function in a cohort of African-American hypertensive siblings.

Methods: LV mass was calculated according to the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) simplified cubed equation and indexed to height(2.