Association study of genetic variants at newly identified lipid gene TRIB1 with coronary heart disease in Chinese Han population

BACKGROUND: Recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified the variants near TRIB1 gene affecting blood lipid levels. However, the association between the reported variants and risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) was not confirmed. METHODS: We conducted two independent case–control studies. The first study consisted of 300 CHD patients and 300 controls and the second study had 1,332 CHD patients and 2,811 controls. The genotypes of two variants rs3201475 and rs17321515 in TRIB1 were determined by TaqMan assay. The dual-luciferase reporter assay was performed for evaluating the function of the SNP rs3201475. RESULTS: The statistical analysis indicated that single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs17321515 was replicated to be associated with triglyceride (TG) level, which was also significantly associated with CHD risk when using the stratified analysis after adjusting for conventional risk factors. Compared with GG genotype, AA carriers of SNP rs17321515 had higher risk in males (odds ratio (OR) = 1.28, 95 %CI = 1.01–1.61; P = 0.03) and smokers (OR = 1.41, 95%CI = 1.09–1.88; P = 0.01). We did not find significantly association between genotypes of rs3201475 and CHD risk. In addition, no significant difference was found in the luciferase activity assay of SNP rs3201475. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicated that SNP rs17321515 is significantly associated with plasma TG level and the increasing risk of CHD among males and smokers in Chinese, whereas there is no positive association between SNP rs3201475 and CHD risk. Smoking could modify the effects of TRIB1 on CHD risk.