Introduction: Thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) is very important in platelet adhesion and aggregation, inflammation, cell to cell interaction, and vascular smooth muscle cell proliferation. Therefore, it may play an important role in the progression of cardiovascular disease. Recently, the TSP-1 N700S variant was proposed to be a new genetic predictor for myocardial infarction (MI) in American population, but the hypothesis was not verified in two other populations. We investigated a possible association between the N700S polymorphism and MI in a Chinese Han population.
Materials and methods: We performed a case-control study including 406 patients who survived an acute MI before age 60 years and 400 age- and sex-matched controls. The N700S polymorphism was determined by polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism.
Results: Of the 806 subjects participating in the study, only 7 of the heterozygotes and none of the homozygotes were detected for the 700S allele. The prevalence of the S allele in the healthy controls was less frequent than those of the west populations (0.3% vs. 11%). No association of the N700S polymorphism with an altered risk of MI was found in our study (GA vs. AA: OR=2.48; 95% CI, 0.48 to 12.86; P=0.46).
Conclusions: Our study suggested that the TSP-1 N700S polymorphism was rare and unrelated to MI in the Chinese Han population. Additional investigations should be performed in populations at different risk for coronary events in order to further elucidate the possible contribution of the polymorphism to cardiovascular disease.
Copyright 2004 Elsevier Ltd.