Exercise training improves cardiovascular disease risk, but individual responses are highly variable. We hypothesized that common polymorphic gene variations would affect these responses. Sedentary obese hypertensive older men who had undergone exercise training were typed at the apolipoprotein (apo) E, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE), and lipoprotein lipase (LPL) loci. Individuals of all genotype subgroups were generally similar before training; they also changed body weight, body composition, and &f1;O(2)max similarly with training. ACE insertion/insertion (II) and insertion/deletion (ID) genotype individuals (n=10) tended to reduce systolic blood pressure more with training than deletion/deletion (DD) individuals (n=8) (-10 versus -5 mm Hg, P=0. 16). ACE II and ID individuals decreased diastolic blood pressure more with training than DD individuals (-10 versus -1 mm Hg, P<0. 005). Systolic blood pressure reductions with training were also larger in apoE3 and E4 (n=15) than apoE2 men (n=3) (-10 versus 0 mm Hg, P<0.05). The same trend was evident for diastolic blood pressure (-7 versus -3 mm Hg), but the difference was not significant. Systolic (14 versus -6 mm Hg, P=0.08) and diastolic (-9 versus -5 mm Hg, P=0.10) blood pressure reductions tended to be greater in LPL PvuII +/+ (n=4) than +/- and -/- individuals (n=14). Systolic (-10 versus 3 mm Hg, P<0.05) and diastolic (-9 versus 2 mm Hg, P<0.05) blood pressure reductions were larger in LPL HindIII +/+ and +/- (n=15) than -/- persons (n=3), respectively. LPL PvuII -/- individuals (n=3) had larger increases in HDL cholesterol (11 versus 2 mg/dL, P<0.05) and HDL(2) cholesterol (8 versus 0 mg/dL, P<0.05) than LPL PvuII +/- and +/+ individuals (n=15). These results are consistent with the possibility that apoE, ACE, and LPL genotypes may identify hypertensives who will improve blood pressure, lipoprotein lipids, and cardiovascular disease risk the most with exercise training.