Latvian Early Atherosclerosis Registry

Atherosclerosis and its complications are a global problem. There are several widely known and proven risk factors that promotes atherogenesis in the majority of patients. However, significant proportion of apparently healthy and young patients with cardiovascular disease but yet without recognized atherogenesis promoting risk factors can be observed in clinical practice. It highlights the need of new risk markers for early atherosclerosis diagnostics to prevent serious cardiovascular complications in these patients and in population in general. The interest in the negative impact of genetic variance, gene regulation on atherogenesis is growing. Therefore the purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of genetic variance and microRNA expression on early atherosclerosis development in the population of young, apparently healthy patients with coronary atherosclerosis. The primary hypothesis is that the group of patients with premature atherosclerosis have common genetic variations promoting early atherosclerosis development. The secondary hypothesis is that specific circulating microRNA expression (miR-126, miR-145 and miR-155) correlate with plaque lipid core by near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) analysis.