Primary hypertension is widely believed to be a complex polygenic disorder with the manifestation influenced by the interactions\nof genomic and environmental factors making identification of susceptibility genes a major challenge. With major advancement\nin high-throughput genotyping technology, genome-wide association study (GWAS) has become a powerful tool for researchers\nstudying genetically complex diseases. GWASs work through revealing links between DNA sequence variation and a disease or\ntrait with biomedical importance. The human genome is a very long DNA sequence which consists of billions of nucleotides\narranged in a unique way. A single base-pair change in the DNA sequence is known as a single nucleotide polymorphism\n(SNP). With the help of modern genotyping techniques such as chip-based genotyping arrays, thousands of SNPs can be\ngenotyped easily. Large-scale GWASs, in which more than half a million of common SNPs are genotyped and analyzed for\ndisease association in hundreds of thousands of cases and controls, have been broadly successful in identifying SNPs\nassociated with heart diseases, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and psychiatric disorders. It is however still debatable whether\nGWAS is the best approach for hypertension. The following is a brief overview on the outcomes of a decade of GWASs on\nprimary hypertension.
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