Impact of 9p21.3 region and atherosclerosis-related genes' variants on long-term recurrent hard cardiac events after a myocardial infarction.

Atherosclerotic coronary artery disease (CAD) and myocardial infarction (MI) as its most severe clinical complication remain the leading causes of mortality in the majority of countries. Despite the progress in the treatment of MI, quite often the patients, after the first-time MI, develop subsequently a variety of adverse cardiovascular events. In this retrospective study we evaluated the contribution of allelic variations in 9p21.3 locus and in 21 atherogenesis-related genes to the development of hard cardiac events in a cohort of patients of Russian ethnicity after the first acute MI during long-term follow-up (7-10 years). Death from cardiac causes and recurrent nonfatal MI were considered as key clinical outcomes. We have shown the association of rs1333049 and rs10757278 in 9p21.3 and MTHFR rs1801133 with recurrent unfavorable events, the latter was observed in time-dependent manner. Multilocus analysis additionally suggested the influence of carriage of the CRP and ENOS genes variants at the development of subsequent adverse events after MI. The composite model built for prediction of the individual genetic risk of postinfarction hard cardiac events included 9p21.3 rs1333049*GG and MTHFR*TT and was characterized by area under the curve (AUC) = 0.65. Our data show that 9p21.3 locus and MTHFR gene polymorphisms could influence long-term prognosis of recurrent hard cardiac events in patients who underwent the first MI. It is possible that addition of genotyping at such loci to existing clinical scores could improve their predictability.