ABSTRACT
Background: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a multifactorial disease whose etiogenesis involves a number of environmental, genetic and lifestyle-related factors. Genetic polymorphisms are noteworthy among these factors because they alter gene expression and, thus, the functions of the respective products. Methods: A case-control study was conducted in the Cardiology Institute, with 79 subjects classified as cases with CAD, and 96 subjects as controls without CAD or other disease. In this study, we evaluated the association between the single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of S447X and Leu7Pro of the lipoprotein lipase (LPL) and neuropeptide Y (NPY) genes, respectively. Results: No differences were found in the frequencies of LPL SNP between the cases and controls. However, the LPL 447X allele carriers exhibited a near-significant difference in the triglycerides (p=0.086) and higher mean in the HDL-c (p=0.018). NPY polymorphisms proved to be infrequent in this study population, and no significant difference was observed between the groups. Conclusions: Our findings provide further support of the genetic polymorphisms effect on the lipid metabolism control. So, further studies are needed to assess the functional effect of this and other polymorphisms, on LPL and in the NPY activity, and their impact on CAD risk.