February 8, 2005

Robin A Felder, PhD

Genetic screening for hypertension and salt sensitivity may not be a common request in the current practice of the clinical laboratory, but the prevalence of these disorders and the drastic consequences they engender means that there may be value in identifying and treating this patient population as soon as possible. And one diagnostic strategy currently being investigated is genetic screening. Of course, medical privacy experts have long warned about the ethical dilemmas raised by large-scale screening of individuals, but the high incidence of these conditions in the general population and the high costs of delayed or inappropriate treatment warrant a discussion of the value of genetic screening as a tool to fight hypertension.