Combined effect of smoking and the -148C>T fibrinogen polymorphism and the risk of myocardial infarction in the Maltese population

Fibrinogen is a soluble glycoprotein that acts as a clotting factor and acute phase reactant. Plasma fibrinogen levels are affected by environmental and demographic factors including gender, advancing age and seasonality. Polymorphisms within the three fibrinogen genes, FGA, FGB, and FGG, encoding the Aα, Bβ and γ chains respectively, also influence plasma fibrinogen levels. The fibrinogen genes have been extensively studied. However, there are conflicting results on whether individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within these genes confer an increased risk of Myocardial Infarction (MI). The -148C>T SNP (rs1800787) is a promoter SNP in FGB, the rate-limiting gene in fibrinogen synthesis. In this study, 1062 samples from the Maltese Acute Myocardial Infarction (MAMI) Study were tested for the -148C>T SNP using PCR-RFLP (polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism) with Hind III. [excerpt]peer-reviewe