The results have come to light in the GRAPHIC study, funded by the British Heart Foundation. Over 450 families in Leicestershire took part in the study.

High blood pressure affects around three in ten adults in the UK and is one of the main causes of strokes and heart attacks. Risk factors for high blood pressure include being overweight and having too much salt in your diet. Genes are also important factors. The GRAPHIC study showed that variations in a gene called WNK1, which produces a protein in the human kidney, also affects blood pressure levels in the population at large.

The team of researchers at the University of Leicester was led by Professor Nilesh Samani and co-researchers Professor Paul Burton and Dr Martin Tobin. Professor Samani, British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the University of Leicester, commented: "High blood pressure is a common health problem that raises the risk of developing heart disease and stroke. For effective prevention and treatment we need to understand the root causes. The findings of our research represent an important step towards this goal. It implicates a gene that can now be a target for further analysis. This particular gene may interact with other factors such as a salt intake and could be a specific target for drug therapy. "

Professor Samani added: "I should like to express our sincere thanks to the families who have taken part, to the general practitioners who have assisted with the study and to the British Heart Foundation. Without their support, this work would not have been possible."

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The biofortified rice was developed by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. One of its major sponsors is HarvestPlus, an international, interdisciplinary research program that collaborates with Cornell and other universities and agencies to reduce micronutrient malnutrition by breeding nutrient-dense staple foods. One of the first crops to be biofortified under this initiative is rice, which is a staple food of some 3 billion people, many of them among the world's poorest.

Now that researchers know that the biofortified rice can actually improve the nutritional status of people who eat it under controlled experimental conditions, follow-up studies will not only seek to confirm these findings but also will look at how well the rice is accepted by the general population, Haas said.

Although researchers at Cornell were not involved in the development of the biofortified rice, they are actively involved in developing disease-, drought- and pest-resistant as well as higher yield rice varieties through genetic engineering.

Co-authors of the study include John L. Beard and Laura Murray-Kolb of Pennsylvania State University; Angelina Felix and the late Angelita del Mundo, University of the Philippines/Los Banos; and Glenn Gregorio, IRRI. The study was supported by the Canadian Micronutrient Initiative, Asian Development Bank, the Danish (DANIDA) Trust Fund and the International Food Policy Research Institute. It was presented last year at the Experimental Biology conference in San Diego, the American Society of Agronomy conference in Seattle and the World Rice Research Conference in Japan.

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