Objective: To investigate the association of variants of the fatty acid-binding protein (FABP) 2 gene with coronary heart disease (CHD) in nondiabetic subjects and in patients with NIDDM.
Research design and methods: Cross-sectional study included 135 nondiabetic and 79 NIDDM subjects with stenosis (> 50%) in at least two coronary arteries. A group of 81 healthy nondiabetic men without CHD served as a control population. All exons and intron-exon junctions of the FABP2 gene were amplified with the polymerase chain reaction, and variants were screened with the single-strand conformation polymorphism analysis.
Results: The allele frequency of an amino acid polymorphism (alanine-->threonine) in codon 54 of exon 2 of the FABP2 gene was 0.26 in nondiabetic subjects with CHD and 0.27 in NIDDM subjects with CHD. Other variants (GTA 118 GTC, GCGCA-->GCACA in the 3'-noncoding region, and the number of ATT repeats in intron 2) also did not associate with CHD.
Conclusions: The variants of the FABP2 gene are not likely to contribute to the risk of CHD in Finnish nondiabetic and NIDDM subjects.