International Journal of Molecular and Cellular Medicine (IJMCM)

Coronary artery disease (CAD) including myocardial infarction (MI) as its complication, is one of the most common heart diseases worldwide and also in Iran, with extremely elevated mortality. CAD is a multifactorial disorder. Twin and family studies at different loci have demonstrated that genetic factors have an important role in the progression of CAD. Many studies have reported a significant association of CDKN2B-AS, also known as ANRIL which is located within the p15, p16, p14 gene cluster at 9p21 locus,  with cardiovascular diseases as well as many other diseases like diabetes and cancers. This study investigated two polymorphisms rs10757274 and rs1333042 of CDKN2B-AS gene at 9p21 locus. 205 subjects, comprising 102 controls and 103 CAD patients were genotyped by TaqMan probe real time PCR technique and haplotypes were examined. This study confirmed the association of rs10757274 variants with CAD in Iranian patients (P= 0.003) but genotype and allele distributions of CAD and control groups showed no significant association for the rs1333042. However, frequency of the [G;G] haplotype of these two SNPs was significantly higher in CAD group (P= 0.0002, Odds Ratio = 3.1, 95% CI = 1.7-5.7). Our finding suggests that [G; G]  haplotype of rs10757274 and rs1333042 may be considered  as a genetic risk factor for susceptibility to CAD in Iranian patients.