Fathers may play a bigger role than mothers in hypertensive patients complicated with coronary heart disease

Hereditary factors contribute 40-60% to Essential Hypertension (EH) development. In some ethnic groups, mothers play a bigger role than fathers in passing risk factors of EH onto their offspring. To find whether mothers or fathers play a bigger role in EH development in Chinese Han people, clinical and genetic family history data of 518 hypertensive Chinese were collected through interview questionnaires after obtaining informed consents. Morbidity of the patients’ parents and offspring were analysed. The mothers showed no statistical difference from the fathers in terms of contribution of passing EH risk factors to subsequent generations (P>0.05). However, after dividing the patients into groups according to the presence or absence or absence of complications, the fathers showed a higher incidence (33.1%, n=118) than the mothers (22.0%, n=123) in the EH group with coronary heart diseases. (P=0.027, OR=1.8, 95% CI=1.2 to 2.4) Thus, fathers may be more likely to pass risk factors of EH with coronary heart disease to their offspring.