Association of Apelin and Apelin Receptor Polymorphisms With the Risk of Comorbid Depression and Anxiety in Coronary Heart Disease Patients

Ying Wang; Wenhui Liu; Yiwen Xiao; Haiyan Yuan; Feng Wang; Pei Jiang; Zhiying Luo

doi:10.3389/fgene.2020.00893

Association of Apelin and Apelin Receptor Polymorphisms With the Risk of Comorbid Depression and Anxiety in Coronary Heart Disease Patients

Front Genet. 2020 Aug 11:11:893. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00893. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Ying Wang^{1

2}, Wenhui Liu^{1

2}, Yiwen Xiao^{1

2}, Haiyan Yuan^{1

2}, Feng Wang^{1

2}, Pei Jiang³, Zhiying Luo^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pharmacy, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, China.
² Institute of Clinical Pharmacy, Central South University, Changsha, China.
³ Institute of Clinical Pharmacy & Pharmacology, Jining First People's Hospital, Jining Medical University, Jining, China.

Abstract

The Apelin (APLN)/apelin receptor (APLNR) signaling pathway is a newly identified regulator in various cardiovascular diseases, which is considered as a candidate pathway for the occurrence of coronary heart disease (CHD), depression, and anxiety. The goal of this study was to investigate the association between APLN/APLNR gene polymorphisms and the risk of depression and anxiety in CHD patients. To this end, a case-control study involving 269 CHD patients and 184 healthy control individuals was conducted. The 269 patients with CHD including 122 patients with and 147 patients without depression, and 56 patients with and 213 patients without anxiety Four single nucleotide polymorphisms were selected and successfully genotyped using Sanger sequencing. The APLN rs2235310T allele and APLNR rs9943582C allele were found to be associated with an increased risk of CHD after multiple test correction (P-adjust < 0.05). The patients with CHD who carried the rs9943582C allele had a higher risk of depression, after adjusting for alcohol drinking habits, insomnia, hypertension, and stroke history, with the Bonferroni correction (P-adjust = 0.018). The APLNR rs2282623 T allele was associated with an increased risk of anxiety in CHD patients after adjusting for related disease complications, with the Bonferroni correction (P-adjust = 0.022). We reported for the first time that the APLN rs2235310 and APLNR rs2282623 polymorphisms are associated with the risks of psychiatric disorders in CHD patients and may serve as novel biomarkers for therapy.

Keywords: anxiety; apelin; coronary heart disease; depression; gene polymorphisms.