Abstract:
Background At present, there are many studies on occupational stress and hypertension, but epidemiological studies are difficult to explain the relationship between them. Hypertension has been recognized as the result of gene-environment interaction. Although studies on the relationship between occupational stress and hypertension have been carried out for about 10 years in oilfield workers in Karamay of China, there are few in-depth studies on genetic environment.
Objective This study is conducted to explore the effects of interaction between alpha-adducin (ADD1) gene and beta-2 adrenergic receptor (β2-AR) gene and the interaction between occupational stress and the two genes on hypertension in Xinjiang oilfield workers, and provide new molecular biological ideas for the prevention and treatment of hypertension.
Methods A total of 352 Xinjiang oilfield workers were selected, who had worked in the same job for more than one year, had no family history of mental illness, and consented to complete a questionnaire. The occupational stress level was evaluated using the revised version of Occupational Stress Scale. There were 176 cases and 176 controls after being matched by age and gender in a 1:1 ratio. The gene polymorphism was detected by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism technique. Conditional logistic regression was used to analyze the association between genes and hypertension, and generalized multi-factor dimensionality reduction (GMDR0.9) was used to assess the gene-gene and gene-environment interactions. The interaction trees were mapped using MDR (3.0.2) software.
Results The average occupational stress score of the case group was higher than that of the control group (P < 0.05). The results of genotype distribution analysis showed that the ADD1 gene Gly460Trp and rs17833172 sites were statistically different between the two groups (P < 0.05), and the β2-AR gene 1023 and rs1042717 sites were not (P > 0.05). The results of logistic regression analysis showed that, after adjusting for selected confounding factors, the GG genotype at rs17833172 of ADD1 gene was a risk factor for hypertension (OR=2.948, 95%CI:1.209-7.187, P < 0.05), and the TT genotype at Gly460Trp of ADD1 was a protective factor for hypertension (OR=0.35, 95%CI:0.155-0.788); the associations between the other two sites and hypertension were not statistically significant (P > 0.05). The results of interaction analysis showed that the gene-gene interaction model between ADD1 Gly460Trp/rs17833172 and β2-AR rs10427 was the optimal model (P < 0.05); the gene-environment interaction models between occupational stress and Gly460Trp, rs17833172, 1023, and rs1042717 sites were the optimal models (P < 0.05). The tree maps showed a strong positive interaction between ADD1 Gly460Trp site and β2-AR rs10427 site, and there were interactions between occupational stress and the four single nucleotide polymorphisms.
Conclusion ADD1 gene rs17833172 site GG genotype may be a risk factor for hypertension, and ADD1 gene Gly460Trp site TT genotype may be a protective factor for hypertension. The positive interaction between ADD1 gene Gly460Trp site and β2-AR gene rs1042717 site might increase oilfield workers' hypertension risk. The interactions between occupational stress and ADD1 gene Gly460Trp and rs17833172 sites and β2-AR gene rs1042717 and 1023 sites are related to the prevalence of hypertension in oilfield workers.