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(Circulation. 2000;101:e48.)
© 2000 American Heart Association, Inc.

Circulation Electronic Pages

Are There Any Associations Among Coagulation Factor VII Gene Polymorphism, Plasma Activated Factor VII Levels, and Cerebrovascular Disease?

Kazuomi Kario, MD, PhD

Hypertension Center Cornell University Medical College/The New York Hospital, New York, NY, Department of Cardiology, Jichi Medical School, Tochigi, Japan

Masafumi Matsuo, MD, PhD

Division of Genetics International Center for Medical Research, Kobe University School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan

Toshiyuki Miyata, PhD

Research Institute National Cardiovascular Center, Osaka, Japan

	Introduction

 
To the Editor:

We read with interest the article by Ghaddar et al¹ showing no association of subclinical atherosclerosis with plasma coagulation factor VII (FVII) level or with FVII gene polymorphism (FVII R353Q), both of which were reported to be associated with myocardial infarction in whites.^{2 3} There are marked racial differences in cardiovascular disease between whites and Japanese. Compared with whites, Japanese show a much lower incidence of coronary artery disease but a higher incidence of stroke. Recently, a direct assay for plasma activated FVII (FVIIa) levels has been developed, and FVIIa levels were found to be more associated with cardiovascular disease than FVIIc or FVII antigen (FVIIag) levels.⁴ However, the relationships of FVIIa and FVIIag levels with ischemic stroke, including the subclinical silent stage, in relation to R353Q polymorphism have not been investigated.

We studied 328 Japanese subjects consisting of an asymptomatic hypertensive group (n=149), a clinically overt ischemic stroke group (n=83), and a normotensive healthy control group (n=96). To assess silent cerebral infarction, MRI was performed in the hypertensive patients, who were classified as the positive group with 1 lacunes (n=61) and the negative group without lacunes (n=88). The subjects studied all resided in the same district, and they did not include any first-degree relatives. Genomic DNA was extracted from citrated whole blood, and FVII R353Q polymorphism was identified by the previously described method using polymerase chain reaction.⁵

The 353Q allele was reported to be present in 22% of whites,¹ whereas it was detected in 38 (12%) of . . . [Full Text of this Article]