Cardiovascular disease is a severe threat to human health and life. Among many risk factors of cardiovascular disease, genetic or gene-based ones are drawing more and more attention in recent years. Accumulated evidence has demonstrated that the loss or mutation of ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) gene can result in DNA damage repair dysfunctions, telomere shortening, decreased antioxidant capacity, insulin resistance, increased lipid levels, etc., and thus can promote the occurrence of cardiovascular risk factors, such as aging, atherosclerosis and metabolic syndrome. In this review, we discusses the possible mechanisms between ATM gene and cardiovascular risk factors, which could be helpful to the related research and clinical application.
This study aimed to explore the possible association between single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs189037 C > T in the promoter region of ataxia telangiectasia mutated (ATM) gene and essential hypertension (EH). We performed a case-control study to collect randomly 369 hospitalized patients aged 50 years and above. They were divided into EH group (190 patients) and control group (179 subjects) according to the diagnostic criteria of hypertension. The SNP rs189037 genotyping was performed using polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. The genotype frequencies of ATM gene polymorphism rs189037 for the whole sample were 33.9% CC, 48.0% CT, and 18.1% TT. There was no significant difference in the genotype frequency distributions of the SNP rs189037 between EH and control groups (P=0.619). After adjustment of the major confounding factors, the SNP rs189037 was still not associated with EH (P > 0.05). We further analyzed data from different groups divided by genders and age respectively, and the relationship was retained (P > 0.05). In addition, we found that the percentage of the TT genotype was much lower in coronary artery disease (CAD) patients than those in the CC or CT genotype (OR=0.49, 95% CI=0.26~0.90, P=0.021). In conclusion, our study suggests that SNP rs189037 in the promoter of ATM gene is not associated with EH. But it is related to the incidence of CAD, and TT genotype seems to be a protective factor for CAD.