OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the associations between polymorphisms Arg389Gly of ß1-adrenergic receptor gene and essential hypertension risk. METHODS: "Hypertension", "polymorphism", "Arg389Gly" and "beta1-adrenergic" or "beta1-adrenoceptor" were used as key words to search the relevant publications between January 1990 and June 2011 in the databases of Pubmed, CNKI and Wanfang. Additional references cited in the retrieved articles were also evaluated. Between-study heterogeneity test was performed by the χ(2)-based Q test. Fix/random-effect model was used for data pooling. Publication bias was evaluated with the linear regression asymmetry Egger's and Begg's tests. RESULTS: Fourteen case-control studies containing 6429 cases of essential hypertension cases and 6986 controls were included for the analyses of Arg389Gly and risk of essential hypertension. Between-study heterogeneity was significant across all studies (q = 37.32, P < 0.001). After stratification by sample size, among the sub-group with a sample size of over 500 cases, the Gly/Gly carriers had significantly a lower risk of essential hypertension than the Arg/Arg carriers (OR = 0.84, 95%CI 0.73 - 0.98). There was no between-study heterogeneity (q = 1.10, P = 0.777). In addition, the risk borderline decreased in the Arg/Gly carriers (OR = 0.95, 95%CI 0.91 - 1.00). The results of dominant model also showed that the risk of essential hypertension significantly decreased (OR = 0.95, 95%CI 0.91 - 0.99) among the Arg/Gly and Gly/Gly carries versus the Arg/Arg carriers. CONCLUSION: The Arg389Gly Arg/Arg genotype carriers are associated with an elevated risk of essential hypertension. And Arg389Gly of ß1-adrenergic receptor gene may play a role in the susceptibility of essential hypertension.