Kawasaki disease (KD; MIM#61175) is a systemic vasculitis syndrome with unknown etiology which predominantly affects infants and children. Recent findings of susceptibility genes for KD suggest possible involvement of the Ca2+/NFAT pathway in the pathogenesis of KD. ORAI1 is a Ca2+ release activated Ca2+ (CRAC) channel mediating store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) on the plasma membrane. The gene for ORAI1 is located in chromosome 12q24 where a positive linkage signal was observed in our previous affected sib-pair study of KD. A common non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism located within exon 2 of ORAI1 (rs3741596) was significantly associated with KD (P = 0.028 in the discovery sample set (729 KD cases and 1,315 controls), P = 0.0056 in the replication sample set (1,813 KD cases vs. 1,097 controls) and P = 0.00041 in a meta-analysis by the Mantel-Haenszel method). Interestingly, frequency of the risk allele of rs3741596 is more than 20 times higher in Japanese compared to Europeans. We also found a rare 6 base-pair in-frame insertion variant associated with KD (rs141919534; 2,544 KD cases vs. 2,414 controls, P = 0.012). These data indicate that ORAI1 gene variations are associated with KD and may suggest the potential importance of the Ca2+/NFAT pathway in the pathogenesis of this disorder.
The present study highlighted the intrinsic abnormality of the mechanical property of the aortic wall as a feature of aortopathy in TOF. The study also indicated that aortic volume overload and, to a lesser extent, intrinsically high aortic stiffness correlated significantly with aortic dilation in TOF.
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