FACTOR-VII R353Q POLYMORPHISM AND LACUNAR STROKE IN JAPANESE HYPERTENSIVE PATIENTS AND NORMOTENSIVE CONTROLS

Elevated plasma factor VII (FVII) levels are reported to be associated with cardiovascular disease in both Caucasians and Japanese. Recent r eports indicate that individuals with the FVII 353Q allele have decrea sed plasma FVII levels. Thus, we investigated the association between lacunar stroke and the FVII R353Q polymorphism in 137 hypertensive pat ients with silent or overt lacunar stroke (stroke group), 83 non-strok e hypertensives without any lacunae detected by magnetic resonance ima ging (non-stroke group), and 97 normotensive control subjects matched for age, sex, and smoking status recruited at an annual health examina tion (normotensive control group). The frequency of the FVII 353Q alle le was 0.057 in the normotensive control group, 0.051 in the non-strok e group and 0.061 in the stroke group. These frequencies, as well as g enotype distribution, were not significantly different from each other , even when we subclassified the ischemic group into silent (n = 54) a nd clinically overt (n = 64) lacunar stroke subgroups. These results s uggest that the FVII 353Q allele is not an important genetic determina nt for cerebrovascular disease in Japanese individuals.