Background: Age-adjusted morbidity and mortality rates from coronary heart disease (CHD) are higher in men than in women. Androgens are suspected to be responsible for the male disadvantage. The genomic effect of androgens is mediated by the androgen receptor (AR), which has a polymorphic CAG repeat in exon 1. The number of repeats is inversely related to the transcriptional activity of the AR on target genes. Methods: We investigated the association of this CAG repeat polymorphism with CHD and myocardial infarction (MI) in 2 independent case-control studies involving 544 Caucasian men. Results: The number of CAG repeats in the AR gene correlated significantly with HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) in controls (r ‫؍‬ 0.21; P ‫؍‬ 0.015). This effect was independent of triglycerides, body mass index, alcohol intake, smoking, and age in a multiple regression model (R 2 ‫؍‬ 50%). Despite decreased HDL-C, lower CAG repeat numbers were not associated with increased risk for CHD (odds ratio ‫؍‬ 0.82; 95% confidence interval, 0.50 -1.36; P ‫؍‬ 0.44) or MI in carriers of AR genes with lower CAG repeat numbers (odds ratio ‫؍‬ 0.72; 95% confidence interval, 0.37-1.39; P ‫؍‬ 0.33). Conclusions: Shorter, more androgenic AR alleles with fewer CAG repeats are associated with lower HDL-C,

Background: Interindividual differences in CYP2D6 activity range from total absence of metabolism of certain drugs to ultrafast metabolism and can produce adverse effects or lack of therapeutic effect under standard therapy. Several mutations have been described in the CYP2D6 gene that abolish CYP2D6 activity. However, four mutations explain the majority of the poor metabolizers. We describe four single-tube assays to detect these mutations. Methods: Three tetra-primer PCR assays were developed to detect the mutations in the CYP2D6*3, *4, and *6 alleles. In these single-tube assays, the CYP2D6 locus is amplified directly, followed by the allele-specific amplification on this new template. In addition, a multiplex long PCR was developed to genotype the CYP2D6*5 allele. Two long PCR amplifications for detection of the deletion of CYP2D6 (*5) and for detection of the CYP2D6 gene region were combined in one tube. Results: Analysis of 114 alleles showed no CYP2D6*3 allele, and allele frequencies of 28.1% for CYP2D6*4, 2.6% for CYP2D6*5, and 0.9% for CYP2D6*6. Re-analysis of the DNA samples by restriction fragment length polymorphism and sequencing analysis confirmed these results. Furthermore, re-analysis of sequenced genomic DNA by tetra-primer PCR analysis (7–11 times) always showed identical results. Conclusions: Our set of single-tube assays allows rapid and reproducible genotyping of the majority of CYP2D6 poor metabolizers.

The formyl peptide receptor 1 (FPR1) is mainly expressed by mammalian phagocytic leukocytes and plays a role in chemotaxis, killing of microorganisms through phagocytosis, and the generation of reactive oxygen species. A large number of ligands have been identified triggering FPR1 including formylated and non-formylated peptides of microbial and endogenous origin. While the expression of FPR1 in neutrophils has been investigated intensively, knowledge on the regulation of FPR1 expression in polarized macrophages is lacking. In this study we show that primary human neutrophils, monocytes and resting macrophages do express the receptor on their cell surface. Polarization of macrophages with IFNγ, LPS and with the TLR8 ligand 3M-002 further increases FPR1 mRNA levels but does not consistently increase protein expression or chemotaxis towards the FPR1 ligand fMLF. In contrast, polarization of primary human macrophages with IL-4 and IL-13 leading to the alternative activated macrophages, reduces FPR1 cell surface expression and abolishes chemotaxis towards fMLF. These results show that M2 macrophages will not react to triggering of FPR1, limiting the role for FPR1 to chemotaxis and superoxide production of resting and pro-inflammatory M1 macrophages.