Association of functional variant of aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 with acute myocardial infarction of Chinese patients

BACKGROUND: The variant of ALDH2 was thought to be associated with Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) due to the consumption of alcohol. This study focused on how ALDH2 variant acts as an independent risk factor for AMI, regardless of alcohol consumption. METHODS AND RESULTS: We used the case–control INTERHEART-China study which took place at 25 centres in 17 cities in mainland China. Cases were patients with AMI and matched by age, sex, and site to controls. Information about alcohol consumption and genotype were collected. We divided cases and controls by alcohol consumption: alcohol intake group and no alcohol intake group. Then, calculated the Odd Ratio (OR) value with confidence interval (CI) at 95% level to find the association between ALDH2 variant and AMI. Results were then adjusted by sex, age, BMI, and other common risk factors of AMI. The study involves a total of 2660 controls and 2322 AMI patients. The no drink intake group showed that there was a correlation between the ALDH2 variant and AMI (OR = 1.236, 95% CI = 1.090–1.401, p = 0.00092). After adjustment of different risk factors this association remained (OR = 1.247, 95% CI = 1.099–1.415, p = 0.00062). Similar results were also obtained from the no alcohol intake group (OR = 1.196, 95% CI = 0.993–1.440, p = 0.05963), however, due to the limited sample size, the result was not significant enough statistically. CONCLUSION: From our results, ALDH2 variant is associated with the risk of AMI even in population that has no alcohol consumption. This suggests that ALDH2 variant may act as an independent risk factor for AMI.