Relationship between Long Noncoding RNA H19 Polymorphisms and Risk of Coronary Artery Disease in a Chinese Population: A Case-Control Study

Abstract

Background/Aim. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a major health problem that has high morbidity and mortality around the world. In recent years, long noncoding RNA H19 has been reported to affect the proliferation and apoptosis of vascular cells, which directly or indirectly results in atherosclerosis. We performed a case-control study to explore the relationship between H19 gene polymorphisms (rs2735971, rs2839698, and rs3024270) and the risk of CAD. Methods. We collected 732 samples from Liaoning Province, China, and three polymorphisms in long noncoding RNA H19 were genotyped using the KASP platform. Results. Our data showed that H19 rs2735971 and rs3024270 variant genotypes were associated with a decreased risk of CAD (rs2735971, P=0.003, odds ratio OR=0.6195, 95% confidence interval=0.44−0.84; rs3024270, P=0.030, OR=0.65, 95% confidence interval=0.44−0.96). No significant association with the risk of CAD was found for H19 rs2839698 polymorphism (P>0.05). In haplotype analysis, H19 polymorphisms of rs2735971-rs2839698-rs3024270 A-C-C haplotype reduced the risk of CAD by 0.61-fold (P=0.004, OR=0.61, 95% confidence interval=0.43–0.86). In addition, we found that rs2839698 interacted with smoking (Pinteraction=0.027), and according to multifactor dimensionality reduction analysis, the three-factor model including H19 rs2839698-smoking-drinking was the best model for the risk of CAD (testing balanced accuracy=0.6979). Conclusion. Our study demonstrated that some genotypes of H19 rs2735971 and rs3024270 polymorphisms, as well as rs2735971-rs2839698-rs3024270 A-C-C haplotype, were associated with the risk of CAD in a Chinese population, and these genotypes have the potential to be biomarkers for predicting CAD risk. We also found that rs2735971-rs2839698-rs3024270 A-C-C may have a significantly lower risk of CAD. The recessive genetic model of rs3024270 could predict the severity of CAD.