Georg Ehret
GROUP LEADER
Department of Internal Medicine
Nephrogenex
Hungary
Biography
My laboratory focuses on complex cardiovascular genetic traits, using molecular biology and computational methods. Blood pressure and hypertension are among the key interests of this laboratory. HTN is quantitavely the major cardiovascular risk factor. Heritability estimates indicate that 30-60% of this risk is genetic. But the pathogenesis of essential HTN is unclear. We work with several large European and US-cohorts to better understand the genetics of essential HTN. This laboratory is currently collaborating in a consortial effort of investigating blood pressure genetics by genomewide association (CHARGE and ICBP consortia) and we have conducted an analysis in which ~70,000 participants were genotyped for hundreds of thousands of SNPs. The preliminary results indicate that the genetic contribution to hypertension is the effect of multiple variants with small effect sizes (within the frequency range of >5%).
Research Interest
Nephrology
