"Our findings were entirely unexpected," said Brandon Michael Blobner, Ph.D., who did the research as part of his doctoral dissertation at Pitt and is now a bioinformatics scientist at BlueSphere Bio in Pittsburgh.
High blood pressure is caused, in part, by the levels of fluid and salt getting out of whack, putting stress on artery walls and damaging blood vessels and organs. With the encouragement of Thomas Kleyman, M.D., the Sheldon Adler Professor of Medicine at Pitt, Blobner worked with Ryan Minster, Ph.D., assistant professor of human genetics at Pitt's School of Public Health, to build a dataset with genomic sequences and blood pressure records on more than 28,000 people who were participating in either the Trans-Omics in Precision Medicine Whole-Genome Sequencing Project or the Somoan Soifua Manuia Study.