Non-invasive blood pressure measurement in mice.

Hypertension is a leading cause of heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure and represents a serious medical issue worldwide. The genetic basis of hypertension is well-established, but few causal genes have been identified thus far. Non-invasive blood pressure measurements are a critical component of high-throughput genetic studies to identify genes controlling blood pressure. Whereas this technique is fairly routine for blood pressure measurements in rats, non-invasive blood pressure measurement in mice has proven to be more challenging. This chapter describes an experimental protocol measuring blood pressure in mice using a CODA non-invasive blood pressure monitoring system. This method enables accurate blood pressure phenotyping in mice for linkage or mutagenesis studies, as well as for other experiments requiring high-throughput blood pressure measurement.