Heart diseases remain the leading cause of death in the US and is an important focus area for the Healthy People 2020 initiative. The long term goal of this application is to determine the causes of aggregation of multiple biological, psychological and life-style related cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in individuals and their covariation in populations. It is possible that genetic variation associated with central physiological mechanisms, lil<e the serotonergic and inflammatory pathways, may partially mediate the aggregation of CVD risk phenotypes. The proposed project aims to comprehensively test several genes in the serotonin pathway (SLC6A4, MAOA, TPH1, TPH2, HTR1A, HTR1B, HTR2A, HTR2C) and genes of inflammatory markers (ILIp, IL6, CRP, TNFa, SELE, SELP, ICAM 1, VCAM 1) for association with multiple CVD risk domains. Specifically, this project aims to: 1)To examine the association between polymorphisms (individually and as haplotypes) in the above mentioned genes and psychological, biological and lifestyle-related CVD risk factors in samples of 1173 European American (EA) and 861 African American (AA) individuals enrolled in the HeartSCORE project, using multivariate and univariate models; 2) To confirm genotype associations after controlling for population stratification using genomic control methods in EA and individual admixture based methods in AA. 3) To examine whether investigated polymorphisms underlie the covariation of CVD risk factors, using structural equation modeling. 4)To determine whether studied polymorphisms predict progression of biological risk factors in EA and AA using multivariate statistics and mixed models. The work during the ROO phase will follow from the work done during the current K99 phase which focused on SLC6A4, HTR2A and CRP genes and on aims 1-3. Once identified, a common genetic variant underlying multiple dimensions of CVD risk may provide avenues towards development of new and novel therapeutics. Simultaneous investigation in two different populations is also expected to provide insights into potential causes underlying racial disparities in CVD risk and prevalence.

Public Health Relevance

Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Identification of novel genetic risk factors that may underlie the aggregation of multiple biological, psychological and lifestyle related CVD risk factors in individuals has tremendous potential to guide the development of comprehensive evaluation and treatment options.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Type
Research Transition Award (R00)
Project #
4R00HL094767-03
Application #
8289715
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (NSS)
Program Officer
Papanicolaou, George
Project Start
2011-08-01
Project End
2014-06-30
Budget Start
2011-08-01
Budget End
2012-06-30
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2011
Total Cost
$249,000
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Pittsburgh
Department
Internal Medicine/Medicine
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
004514360
City
Pittsburgh
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
15213
Halder, Indrani; Matthews, Karen A; Buysse, Daniel J et al. (2015) African Genetic Ancestry is Associated with Sleep Depth in Older African Americans. Sleep 38:1185-93
Halder, I; Champlin, J; Sheu, L et al. (2014) PPAR? gene polymorphisms modulate the association between physical activity and cardiometabolic risk. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis 24:799-805
Halder, Indrani; Kip, Kevin E; Mulukutla, Suresh R et al. (2012) Biogeographic ancestry, self-identified race, and admixture-phenotype associations in the Heart SCORE Study. Am J Epidemiol 176:146-55