Congenic/Consomic Models of Hypertension

Human essential hypertension is a complex, multifactorial, quantitative trait under polygenic control. Despite major recent advances in genome sequencing and statistical tools, the genetic dissection of essential hypertension still provides a formidable challenge. Genetic models of essential hypertension such as the spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat (SHRSP) provide the scientist with genetic homogeneity, not possible within a human population, to aid the search for causative genes. The principal strategy in the rat has been the identification of quantitative trait loci (QTL) responsible for blood-pressure regulation by genome-wide scanning. In this chapter we focus on congenic and consomic breeding strategies for the confirmation of QTL and the genetic dissection of the implicated regions.