Platelet glycoprotein Ia C807T, Ib C3550T, and IIIa Pl A1/A2 polymorphisms and ischemic stroke in young Taiwanese Chih-Hung Chen a , Yuk-Keung Lo b , Dershin Ke c , Chin-Kuan Liu d , Chia-Wei Liou e , Hua-Lin Wu f , Ming-Liang Lai a, * for the Southern Taiwan Young Stroke Study Group a Department of Neurology, College of Medicine, National Cheng-Kung University, 138 Sheng Li Road, Tainan 704, Taiwan b Neurology Section, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan c Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, Chi-Mei Foundation Hospital, Tainan, Taiwan d Department of Neurology, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan e Department of Neurology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Kaohsiung; Taiwan, R.O.C. f Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan Received 12 December 2003; received in revised form 20 April 2004; accepted 21 July 2004 Available online 11 September 2004 Abstract Platelet plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of thrombotic cardiovascular diseases. Recently, the polymorphism of platelet glycoprotein (GP) genes has been reported to be associated with an increased risk for ischemic stroke. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the association between platelet GP genetic variants and ischemic stroke in young Taiwanese. We conducted a case-control study in 157 young ischemic stroke patients recruited between September 2001 and March 2003 and 157 age- and sex-matched controls. The genotypes of platelet GP Ia C807T, GP Ib C3550T, and GP IIIa Pl A1/A2 polymorphisms were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism. Student’s t -test, chi-square test, and logistic regression modeling were used for data analyses. The GP Ia C807T CC, CT and TT genotype frequencies were similar between patients (50.3%, 43.9%, 5.7%) and controls (53.5%, 38.9%, 7.6%; p =0.58). There were no significant differences in GP Ib C3550T CC and CT genotype distributions between patients (91.1%, 8.9%) and controls (91.7%, 8.3%; p =0.84). Of all subjects, none carries GP IIIa Pl A2 mutation. In conclusion, platelet GP Ia C807T and GP Ib C3550T polymorphisms in our population are less common compared with Caucasians, and GP IIIa Pl A1/A2 genetic mutation is not found, and all of them are not associated with ischemic stroke in young Taiwanese. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Ischemic stroke; Platelet glycoprotein receptor; Polymorphism 1. Introduction Platelet plays an important role in the pathogenesis of arterial occlusive disorders. Relevant evidence includes histology findings from coronary thrombosis [1], increased platelet activity in stroke patients [2], and reduction of vascular events after the use of antiplatelet agents [3]. Genetic polymorphisms of platelet glycoprotein (GP) genes influence the structure of or the expression level of platelet GP receptors [4–6]. Recently, several studies have evaluated the association between the polymorphism of platelet GP genes and myocardial infarction [7–17] or ischemic stroke [10,15,18–26], but the results were controversial. Most positive associations have been obtained from studies on younger population because the genetic contribution has been argued to be stronger in young adults than in the elderly. Almost all of the epidemiological evidence investigating the association between platelet GP polymorphisms and arterial throm- botic events pertains to the white populations, and relevant studies [11,12,25] on population other than Caucasians are 0022-510X/$ - see front matter D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jns.2004.07.019 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 6 2766187; fax: +886 6 2374285. E-mail address: amatalai@mail.ncku.edu.tw (M.-L. Lai). Journal of the Neurological Sciences 227 (2004) 1 – 5 www.elsevier.com/locate/jns