Pathogen burden in essential hypertension.

BACKGROUND Associations between pathogens and hypertension (HT) has been reported, but few studies have focused on the relationship between aggregate pathogens and HT. The present study explored whether the risk of HT is associated with each pathogen (defined as Chlamydia pneumoniae (C. pneumoniaee), mycoplasma pneumoniae (m. pneumoniae), helicobacter pylori (h. pylori) and coxsackie virus) or with aggregate pathogens in chinese mongolians. METHODS AND RESULTS One thousand and thirty Chinese Mongolians aged 30 years or more were recruited, including 488 hypertensive and 942 normotensive subjects. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to detect IgG antibodies for C. pneumoniaee, M. pneumoniae, H. pylori and Coxsackie virus. The seroprevalence of Coxsackie virus was significantly associated with HT (odds ratio (OR) 3.7 after adjustment for risk factors), but no significant association was found for C. pneumoniae, M. pneumoniae and H. pylori (OR 1.32, 0.75 and 1.19, respectively). The results also showed that the risk of HT was associated with the aggregate pathogens: it increased with the increasing number of pathogens, and the ORs were 1.629, 2.653, 2.129, and 5.146 for 1, 2, 3 and 4 pathogens, respectively, after controlling for risk factors. CONCLUSION The risk of HT is associated with Coxsackie virus and aggregate pathogen load. The mechanism(s) underlying the associations remain to be elucidated further.