Catechol-O-methyltransferase promoter hypomethylation is associated with the risk of coronary heart disease

Abstract

Abstract. Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene variation is known to be associated with the risk of acute coronary events. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the contribution of COMT promoter methylation towards the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). COMT methylation was evaluated in 48 CHD cases and 48 well-matched non-CHD controls using bisulfite pyrosequencing technology. The results demonstrated that CHD cases had a significantly lower level of methylation at COMT CpG3 sites compared with the controls (33.77±5.71 vs. 36.42±5.00%; P=0.018). Further analysis, according to gender, showed that CpG3 methylation was associated with CHD in males (P=0.038) but not in females (P=0.253), suggesting that there is a gender disparity in the association between COMT methylation and CHD. In conclusion, it was determined that COMT CpG3 hypomethylation is associated with an increased risk of CHD in males.

Association between DNA methylation and coronary heart disease or other atherosclerotic events: A systematic review

“…In total, 51 articles met our eligibility criteria (Supplementary Table 1) and were included in the analysis. Of the 51 selected studies, 17 included participants from Europe [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] 14 from China [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36], six from USA [37][38][39][40][41][42], three from India [43][44][45], two from Canada [46,47], and one each from Japan [48], Malaysia [49], Iran [50], Russia [51], Brazil [52] and Mexico [53]…”

“…Seven studies analyzed global DNA methylation [6,7,23,34,36,42,52], 31 followed a candidate-gene approach [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]20,22,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]35,[38][39][40][41]45,46,49,50,[54][55][56], seven were epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) [16,18,19,21,44,48,53], two used both global DNA methylation and candidate-gene approaches [37,43], three used EWAS and global DNA methylation approaches [15,17,51], and on...…”

“…The vast majority of the selected candidate-gene methylation studies analyzed blood samples (n=28) [8][9][10][11][12]14,20,22,[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]35,40,41,43,46,47,49,50,56]. The other tissues isolated were aortic [37,39,55] or other vascular tissues [13,38,54] (Supplementary Table 2b).…”

“…Zhong 2016 35 Hypomethylation in COMT promoter was associated with CHD in males and with aging in controls.…”

A male-specific association between AGTR1 hypermethylation and coronary heart disease

“…The control group consisted of inpatients with coronary artery stenosis less than 50% in the major coronary arteries and without any atherosclerotic vascular disease. Standardized coronary angiography with Seldinger' s technique was performed in all patients [21,22]. The results of the angiography were independently evaluated by at least two cardiologists.…”