NINJ2 polymorphism is associated with ischemic stroke in Chinese Han population

Recently, a genome-wide association study reported an association between two single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) rs11833579 and rs12425791 near NINJ2 gene and ischemic stroke in Caucasians. Therefore, NINJ2 gene is an important candidate locus in the prevalence of ischemic stroke. We performed a hospital based genetic association study in Chinese Han subjects to investigate the relationship between NINJ2 gene and ischemic stroke. We genotyped 14 tagging single nucleotide polymorphisms (tSNP) in 749 ischemic stroke subjects and 924 control subjects and conducted the association between these tSNPs and ischemic stroke. We detected a tSNP rs10849373 in the first intron of the NINJ2 gene significantly associated with ischemic stroke (both genotype and allelic p = 0.0001). The minor A allele increased the risk of ischemic stroke with a per-allele OR of 1.37 for the additive genetic model in univariate analysis (p = 0.0001). The significance remained after adjustment for the covariates of age, gender, BMI, cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, hypertension, and diabetes. Therefore, we report a new genetic variant, rs10849373, located in the first intron of the NINJ2 gene, conferring risk of ischemic stroke in Chinese Han subjects. Further genetic association and functional studies are required to search the causal functional variant in linkage disequilibrium with this polymorphism.