Association of ACP1 gene polymorphisms and coronary artery disease in northeast Chinese population

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the major cause of death in most countries including China (He et al. 2005). A number of susceptible variants of candidate genes have been recognized as genetic risk factors that are associated with pathogenesis of coronary heart disease (Wu et al. 2001; Achour et al. 2011; Zhou et al. 2011). Recently, Banci et al. (2009) have reported acid phosphatase 1 (ACP1) gene *C allele as a risk factor for CAD in Caucasian (OR= 3.188). Here, we show that the genotype GA of rs79716074 (ACP1 gene, exon 6) is associated with decreased risk of CAD in northeast Chinese population especially in females. The ACP1 gene is the only member of class II cysteinebased protein tyrosine phophatase (PTP) family in human and encodes the low molecular weight PTP (LMW-PTP), a group of 18-kDa proteins widely expressed in many tissues. LMW-PTP is involved in the regulation of important physiological processes including stress resistance and synthesis of the polysaccharide capsule, etc. (Souza et al. 2009). There are three common codominant alleles of ACP1: ACP1*A, ACP1*B and ACP1*C. which contains single base substitutions located at specific sites. The ACP1*C allele differs from ACP1*A and ACP1*B alleles at rs11553742, while ACP1*A and ACP1*B alleles differ in an A–G transition at rs79716074. Previous studies reported that ACP1 gene polymorphisms may be important pathogenic factors of immune dysregulation such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosis process, endometriosis and allergy (Ammendola et al. 2008, Teruel et al. 2011, 2012).