New polymorphisms of the angiotensin II type 1 receptor gene and their associations with myocardial infarction and blood pressure: the ECTIM study. Etude Cas-Témoin de l'Infarctus du Myocarde.

What Was Tested

This clinical trial looks at the intervention named in the title in the context of low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

Since the AT1R+1166 A/C polymorphism does not appear to be functional, the researchers postulated that it might be in linkage disequilibrium with an unidentified functional variant which would affect the regulation of the gene in response to angiotensin II.

The present study was conducted to identify new polymorphisms of the AT1R gene that might be responsible for this interaction.

Who Took Part

The study group was 651 patients.

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

These polymorphisms, together with the +1166 A/C polymorphism and a previously described T/C substitution at the 573th nucleotide of exon 5, were genotyped in the Etude Cas-Témoin de l'Infarctus du Myocarde (ECTIM) study, a multicentre study comparing 651 patients who had survived a myocardial infarction and 728 controls from Belfast (United Kingdom) and Lille, Strasbourg and Toulouse (France).

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as multicenter.

Running at several centres spread the study over different clinics and patient groups.

The first four exons, which are untranslated, and 2.2 kb in the 5' flanking region of the AT1R gene were explored by polymerase chain reaction/single-strand conformation polymorphism.

Seven polymorphisms were detected in the 5' region at positions -1424, -810, -713, -521, -214, -213 and -153 upstream from the start of transcription.

The genotypes of the -810, -713, -214, -213 and -153 polymorphisms were completely concordant.

One substitution was detected at the 55th nucleotide of exon 4.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Blood Pressure, DNA, DNA Transposable Elements, France, Gene Deletion, Gene Frequency and Genotype.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a multicenter study in 651 patients in people with low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Its findings take up roughly 6 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 1998 (Journal of hypertension), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: Low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension research.