A method of lowering blood pressure

A method for lowering blood pressure in a human subject comprising:

• a. identifying genes related to sodium and potassium biology from a plurality of data sources, including but not limited to, biological pathways from ontological databases encompassing processes involved in the absorption, transport, action, or excretion of sodium and/or potassium, genes linked to sodium and potassium via evidence amassed in scientific literature, or genes for which expression or function is correlated with treatment by sodium, potassium, or a pharmacological agent that modulates either of these;
• b. identifying individuals who may be more sensitive to a sodium and/or potassium intervention, including, but is not limited to, a pharmacological agent, lifestyle or dietary intervention, or non-prescription supplement;
• designed to achieve at least one of the following:
• lower sodium, raised potassium, or a reduction an individual's sodium-to-potassium ratio, through the following;
• i. obtaining data representing genome-wide variants from a plurality of individuals with hypertension and a plurality of individuals without hypertension, or a plurality of individuals in which blood pressure is measured as a continuous variable, including, but not limited to, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and pulse pressure;
• ii. obtaining estimated effect sizes on the disorder from said plurality of variants;
• iii. generating a plurality of annotations corresponding to the genes identified in either step (a);
• iv. identifying genome-wide variants that intersect the annotations from step (b) (iii);
• v. obtaining data representing genome-wide variants in a biological sample from a subject;
• vi. calculating a predictive polygenic score for only variants annotated to the sodium and/or potassium gene set identified in step (a) from the subject's genome wide variant data;
• vii. identifying individuals more sensitive to the intervention described in step (a) from the predictive polygenic score from step (c) (vi) that is elevated relative to a reference value indicates that the subject may be sensitive to the at least one of the sodium and/or potassium interventions described in step (a);
• c. treating the subject with the selected intervention.