Angiotensin-converting enzyme gene insertion/deletion polymorphism in Egyptian patients with myocardial infarction

Abstract

This work aimed to test the association of the angiotensin-converting enzyme gene insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism with myocardial infarction. This study comprised 79 Egyptian myocardial infarction cases with a mean age of 54.4+/-9.9 years including 60 males and 19 females, plus 238 healthy unrelated individuals of nearly matched age and sex as a control group. For all subjects, DNA testing for the angiotensin-converting enzyme gene I/D polymorphism was done using PCR amplification for detection of both the D and I alleles followed by a second run PCR specific for the I allele for samples typed as DD in the first run. Cases had a higher frequency of DD (29.1%) and ID (62.0%) genotypes than II (8.9%) genotype, with a higher frequency of D allele than I allele (64.4% vs. 33.6%). Compared to controls, cases had a significantly higher frequency of ID genotype (62.0% vs. 47.5%, p<0.05).This was more apparent among cases in the low risk group (p=0.002) than in the high risk group (p=0.041). The angiotensin-converting enzyme gene I/D polymorphism is probably a risk factor for ischaemic heart disease among Egyptian cases, particularly if integrated with other environmental and genetic risk factors.