Genome-Wide Association Study of Coronary Artery Disease

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a multifactorial disease with environmental and genetic determinants. The genetic determinants of CAD have previously been explored by the candidate gene approach. Recently, the data from the International HapMap Project and the development of dense genotyping chips have enabled us to perform genome-wide association studies (GWAS) on a large number of subjects without bias towards any particular candidate genes. In 2007, three chip-based GWAS simultaneously revealed the significant association between common variants on chromosome 9p21 and CAD. This association was replicated among other ethnic groups and also in a meta-analysis. Further investigations have detected several other candidate loci associated with CAD. The chip-based GWAS approach has identified novel and unbiased genetic determinants of CAD and these insights provide the important direction to better understand the pathogenesis of CAD and to develop new and improved preventive measures and treatments for CAD.