ORIGINAL ARTICLES   

International Angiology 2002 March;21(1):53-57

Copyright © 2003 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

The V34L polymorphism of factor XIII and peripheral arterial disease

Renner W. ^{1, 3}, Brodmann M. ¹, Pabst E. ¹, Stanger O. ², Wascher T. C. ³, Pilger E. ¹

¹ Department of Medicine, Division of Angiology, 2 Department of Surgery, Division of Cardiac Surgery, 3 Department of Medicine, Diabetic Angiopathy Research Group, Karl Franzens University, Graz, Austria

Background. Factor XIII cat­a­lyz­es cross­link­ing of ­fibrin in the last steps of the coag­u­la­tion pro­cess. A com­mon poly­mor­phism in the gene for fac­tor XIII A sub­unit (F13A1 V34L) has been asso­ciat­ed with a ­decreased risk for cor­o­nary ­artery dis­ease, cereb­ro­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, and deep ­venous throm­bo­sis.
Methods. To ana­lyze the role of this poly­mor­phism in periph­er­al arte­ri­al dis­ease (PAD) we per­formed a case-con­trol study includ­ing 873 ­patients with doc­u­ment­ed PAD and a total of 523 con­trols with­out vas­cu­lar dis­ease. The F13A1 gen­o­type was deter­mined by ­an allele-spe­cif­ic poly­me­rase chain reac­tion.
Results. Genotype dis­tri­bu­tion and ­allele fre­quen­cies were not sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent ­between ­patients (VV: 51.9%; VL: 40.7%; LL: 7.4%) and con­trols (VV: 54.7%; VL: 39.2%; LL: 6.1%). Mean age at onset of the dis­ease was sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er in LL homo­zy­gous sub­jects than in VV homo­zy­gous sub­jects (67.3 ver­sus 64.1 years, p=0.017). Heterozygous sub­jects had an inter­me­di­ate age at onset (65.1 years), sug­gest­ing a gene-dose ­effect. The asso­ci­a­tion of the L34 var­i­ant with onset of PAD ­remained sig­nif­i­cant after adjust­ment for other risk fac­tors. The ­effect was strong­er in men than in women.
Conclusions. We con­clude that the F13A1 V34L poly­mor­phism was not asso­ciat­ed with the pres­ence of PAD in our study, but may be ­linked to a later onset of the dis­ease.