Aims: The European Collaborative Project on Inflammation and Vascular Wall Remodeling in Atherosclerosis - Intravascular Ultrasound (ATHEROREMO-IVUS) study was designed as an exploratory clinical study in order to investigate the associations between genetic variation, coronary atherosclerosis phenotypes, and plaque vulnerability as determined by IVUS.
Methods and results: The ATHEROREMO-IVUS study was a prospective, observational study of 581 patients with stable angina pectoris or acute coronary syndrome (ACS) who were referred for coronary angiography to the Thoraxcenter, Rotterdam, enriched with 265 IBIS-2 participants (total population, n=846). Prior to catheterisation, blood samples were drawn for genetic analyses. During the catheterisation procedure, IVUS was performed in a non-culprit coronary artery. The primary endpoint was the presence of vulnerable plaque as determined by IVUS virtual histology (VH). In addition, we performed a genome-wide association study of plaque morphology. We observed strong signals associated with plaque morphology in several chromosomal regions: twelve SNPs (rs17300022, rs6904106, rs17177818, rs2248165, rs2477539, rs16865681, rs2396058, rs4753663, rs4082252, rs6932, rs12862206, rs6780676) in or near eight different genes (GNA12, NMBR, SFMBT2, CUL3, SESN3, SLC22A25, EFBN2, SEC62) were most significant.
Conclusions: In conclusion, we found twelve SNPs in or in the proximity of eight genes, which were possibly associated with markers of vulnerable plaque. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01789411.