Systolic blood pressure

Systolic blood pressure is the top number, the pressure when your heart beats. This score estimates your genetic tendency toward higher or lower systolic pressure.

What this systolic blood pressure score reads

This is PGS012514, published by Huang and colleagues in Nature Communications in 2026 as part of a framework for reporting polygenic risk in people of admixed ancestry. It sums 107 variants selected by pruning and thresholding from GWAS data on 459,777 people, about 80% European and 14% African ancestry.

Systolic pressure is the higher of the two numbers, the push against artery walls when the heart contracts.

How well it predicts blood pressure

The authors report the result in the most useful unit available: each standard deviation higher score corresponded to about 1.99 mmHg higher systolic blood pressure, measured in 27,787 people with age, sex, BMI and genetic ancestry accounted for.

Two millimetres of mercury per standard deviation is a real effect and a small one. Moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile of this score spans roughly 2.5 standard deviations, so about 5 mmHg between people at opposite ends of the distribution.

What 5 mmHg is worth

That figure has a useful benchmark. In a 2021 Lancet meta-analysis of 48 randomised trials covering 344,716 adults, lowering systolic pressure by 5 mmHg reduced major cardiovascular events by about 10%, with stroke and heart failure down 13% each.

So the genetic spread this score describes is comparable to a single meaningful treatment step, and treatment, weight loss, salt reduction and exercise all act on top of it rather than being limited by it. Blood pressure is also measured in thirty seconds with a cuff, which no genetic estimate improves on.

What this score does not capture

Secondary hypertension is outside it entirely: kidney disease, primary aldosteronism, thyroid disorders, sleep apnoea and several medications, including some decongestants and NSAIDs, raise blood pressure for reasons no score reads. Persistent high readings deserve a clinical workup regardless of percentile.

Rare monogenic blood pressure syndromes such as Liddle syndrome are likewise invisible to a common-variant score.

Ancestry and accuracy

This score comes from work specifically aimed at the admixed-ancestry problem, and it was built on GWAS data that included a substantial African-ancestry component, which is better than most. The validation reported here was in European-ancestry participants, so the measured effect size carries that caveat.

How much of this score your file covers

All 107 variants in the published score are present in a standard consumer DNA file, so this reconstructs the published score in full.

Common questions

My blood pressure is normal but my score is high. Which matters? The cuff reading. It measures the actual thing, today, and blood pressure is what treatment decisions are based on. A high score is a reason to keep measuring rather than a reason to worry about a number you can already see.

How much of blood pressure is genetic? More than this score captures. Common-variant studies find hundreds of blood pressure loci, and this 107-variant score corresponds to about 2 mmHg per standard deviation. Age, weight, salt, alcohol, activity and kidney function account for a great deal of the rest.

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