Apolipoprotein E (ApoE) polymorphism influences lipid metabolism, but its association with arterial hypertension is controver-sial. The objective of this study was to examine the association between ApoEpolymorphism and prevalent hypertension in a large unselected population of older adults. Participants from the baseline of the Bambuí Health Aging Study whose ApoE genes had been genotyped were selected for this study (N = 1406, aged 60-95 years). These subjects represented 80.7% of the total elderly residents in Bambuí city, MG, Brazil. Hypertension was defined as a systolic blood pressure ≥140 mmHg and/or a diastolic blood pressure ≥90 mmHg, or the use of anti-hypertensive medication. The exposure variable was the ApoEgenotype as follows: ε3 carriers, ε3ε3; ε2 carriers, ε2ε2 or ε2ε3, and ε4 carriers, ε3ε4 or ε4ε4. Potential confounding variables were age, gender, traditional cardiovascular risk factors, uric acid, and creatinine levels. The prevalence of hypertension was 61.3%. Compared with the ε3 homozygotes, neither the ε2 nor the ε4 carrier status was associated with hypertension (adjusted prevalence ratios = 0.94, 95%CI = 0.83-1.07 and 0.98, 0.89-1.07, respectively). On the other hand, the ε2 allele carriers had lower LDL cholesterol levels (P < 0.001) and the ε4 carriers had higher LDL cholesterol levels (P = 0.036). This study provides epidemiologic evidence that the ApoEgenotype is not associated with prevalent hypertension in old age.