Endocrine Abstracts

Introduction and aim: Obesity epidemic contributes to the increasing prevalence of high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and dyslipidemia, which are all known risk factors for coronary artery disease (CAD). Metabolic syndrome (MS) describes the common clinical finding wherein component CAD risk factors cluster within a single patient. Since obesity shares common clinical characteristics with both metabolic syndrome (MS) and Cushing’s syndrome it is speculated about obesogenic role of glucocorticoids. The response to glucocorticoids is determined by the glucocorticoid receptor gene variants that can be associated with enhanced or reduced responsiveness to endogenous glucocorticoids. The aim of our study was to investigate a relationship of Bcl1 polymorphism of GR gene and MS in patients who underwent coronary artery angiography.

Materials and methods: We examined 145 patients with CAD and 60 healthy controls matched by age, sex and body mass index. The presence of MS was determined according to the criteria of International Diabetes Federation (IDF) using waist circumference (cm), arterial blood pressure (mmHg), basal glycemia, HDL cholesterol and triglicerides (mmol/l). Characterization of Bcl1 polymorphysm was done by PCR using restriction fragment lenght polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. Persons with wild type genotype (GG) were marked as those without Bcl1 polymorphysm, and persons with GC and CC genotype as those with Bcl1 polymorphysm.

Results: The presence of MS was more frequent in patients with CAD than in healthy controls (P<0.001). When the individual parameters of MS were analyzed separately after adjusting to IDF criteria for MS, there was a statistically significant difference between waist circumference, level of arterial blood pressure and basal glycemia between patients with CAD and healthy controls (P<0.001).The Bcl1 polymorphism was more frequent in patients with CAD (P<0.001).

Conclusion: Bcl1 polymorphysm of glucocorticoid receptor gene is more frequent in people with coronary artery disease.