Diastolic blood pressure

Diastolic blood pressure is the bottom number, the pressure between beats. This score estimates your genetic tendency toward higher or lower diastolic pressure.

What this diastolic blood pressure score reads

This is PGS012515, the companion score to the systolic one from the same 2026 Nature Communications paper, built the same way from GWAS data on 459,777 people. Diastolic pressure is the lower number, the resting pressure in the arteries between heartbeats.

How well it predicts diastolic pressure

Each standard deviation higher score corresponded to about 1.40 mmHg higher diastolic blood pressure in 27,780 people, adjusted for age, sex, BMI and genetic ancestry. As with the systolic score, that is a genuine signal and a modest one against the day-to-day range of a person's own readings.

How to read a high or low score

Diastolic pressure matters most in younger adults; from roughly the sixth decade onward systolic pressure becomes the stronger predictor of cardiovascular events as arteries stiffen. A high percentile here is context for a measured value, not a substitute for one.

What this score does not capture

The same list as for systolic pressure: kidney disease, hormonal causes, sleep apnoea, alcohol, salt, body weight, medication effects, and rare single-gene syndromes. None of it is read from a DNA file, and all of it is more actionable than a percentile.

Ancestry and accuracy

This is the diastolic arm of a method designed for admixed populations, drawing on GWAS data with a substantial African-ancestry share. Its reported validation was in European-ancestry participants, and the score reconstructed from a consumer DNA file is missing some of its published variants, which weakens it further.

How much of this score your file covers

85 of the published score's 98 variants are present in a standard consumer DNA file (87%). The remaining 13 cannot be read from one, so a result computed here approximates the published score rather than reproducing it.

Common questions

Which number should I pay attention to, systolic or diastolic? Both are measured together and clinicians read them together, but systolic pressure carries more prognostic weight in middle age and later, while diastolic matters relatively more in younger adults.

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