A study of the role of the Myocyte-specific Enhancer Factor-2A gene in coronary artery disease.

We evaluated the role of the MEF2A as a risk factor for coronary artery disease (CAD) in 1186 subjects with angiographically documented disease compared with 885 CAD-free individuals in the Saudi population. Screening the gene revealed exon 11 as the most polymorphic of all coding regions, harbouring several substitution polymorphisms and insertion/deletions (indels) at a locus containing an 11 CAG trinucleotide chain and a CCGCCGCCA sequence, which introduced frameshifts and premature stop codons at nt146637 and nt146647, nt146780 or nt146783. While these indels were not significantly associated with CAD, a causative relationship was established for rs1059759 G>C [1.21(1.02-1.43); p=0.029], and a borderline one for rs34851361 A>G [1.22(0.9-1.54); p=0.088]. Importantly, a haplotype 1A-2G-3G-4A-5C-6G-7G-8A constructed from the studied SNPs was also associated with CAD [6.39(0.93-43.75); p=0.0052]. These results identify MEF2A gene as a susceptibility gene for CAD.