Biotech Values

[genisi]

However, I find it odd that the study apparently did not study the famous group of people with the Apo A-1 Milano variant who I thought clearly had a demonstrated profile with higher than normal HDL and lower than normal cardiovascular risk.

First of, a nitpick: ApoA-1 Milano carriers have lower than normal plasma HDL with low prevalence of atherosclerotic disease (so, actually, they might fit in with the data of the study if you put them in a more general way i.e.that there's no association between HDL levels and MI risk). Two reasons I can think of for not using the Milano variant, first ApoA-1 Milano is a mutation (not a polymorphism) and its gene pool is limited to a very small population mostly in Italy (all sharing a common ancestor), while the rest of us have the wild-type. So it would not be a good SNP in such epidemiological case-control association study. Second, it doesn't suit the study's hypothesis that genetically raised plasma HDL cholesterol might be protective for myocardial infarction.