The UT School of Public Health has a long-standing history of studying genes to try to understand the causes of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and other common diseases. "Medicine today primarily treats the symptoms of diseases," explains Eric Boerwinkle, Ph.D., director of the Human Genetics Center at The University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston. "But when we begin to understand the causes we can begin to get the right drug and the right treatment and avoid the trial and error process.
By tailoring the therapy to the causes of disease for each patient we're going to get a better and faster response and it's going to reduce health care costs."

The Human Genetics Center has been designated by the World Health Organization as a collabo-rating center for the investigation of the genetics of common diseases. Boerwinkle and his fellow researchers across the United States are involved in several major studies that are beginning to help them understand the genes contributing to those diseases.

One of the biggest, the Family Blood Pressure Program, is a long-term study of hypertension, which affects 50 million Americans and is a major risk factor for stroke, renal failure and cardiovascular disease. Funded by the National Heart,
Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, the study is an unusually collaborative alliance between the UT School of Public Health and three other research centers.

An editorial in The American Journal of Hypertension described the study as "undoubtedly the largest frontal assault ever directed at the genetics of a common disease."

"We're trying to understand why some people get hypertension and other people don't," explains Boerwinkle, who oversees the Family Blood Pressure Program. "We're trying to identify the genes for hypertension itself, the clinical complications, and the response
to treatment."

Another study at the Human Genetics Center is attempting to identify and analyze the genes affecting high-density lipoprotein (HDL), or "good" cholesterol. "The overall long-term question is how can we influence HDL cholesterol levels," Boerwinkle explains. Boerwinkle is principal investigator for the four-year, $4.65 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

The Human Genetics Center's largest field center is in Star County, Texas. Principal investigator Craig Hanis is investigating the diseases that disproportionally affect Hispanics, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension and obesity. And Hanis' studies involve more than just genetics. He's also looking at how genes and the environment interact to influence the risk of diseases in the Hispanic population.

"This country has
got to figure out a way to reduce health care
costs, and genetics is
one way of doing that ."