Purpose: To discuss the relationship between the acute cerebral infarction of differently aged population and the variable number tandem repeat polymorphism of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) gene.
Methods: The genotypes of 129 acute cerebral infarction patients and 100 healthy control subjects were determined by PCR and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE).
Results: In the patient group, the frequency of allelic gene a was higher than that in the control group (13.56 % vs 3 %, p < 0.01), and the frequencies of the patients followed the descending order from young through middle-aged to elderly (42.31 % vs 17.2 % vs 5.8 %). The frequencies of the young, middle-aged and elderly population in the control group differed significantly (5.55 % vs 2.94 % vs 2.63 %), and those of the young and middle-aged population in the two groups also differed statistically significantly.
Conclusion: The ab genotype of eNOS 4th intron is correlated with the acute cerebral infarction of young and middle-aged Chinese Han population that may involve allelic gene a as an independent risk factor (Tab. 3, Fig. 3, Ref. 13).