Statistical analysis

All continuous variables were expressed as mean ± S.D. Differences in continuous variables between the CAD patients and control subjects were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U-test. Differences in categorical variables were analyzed using Fisher’s exact test. Differences in distributions of genotypes and alleles between CAD patients and control subjects were analyzed using Fisher’s exact test. Based on the genotype data of the genetic variations, we performed linkage disequilibrium and haplotype-based case-control analyses using the software SNPAlyze version 8.2 (Dynacom, Yokohama, Japan) [27]. The pairwise linkage disequilibrium analysis was performed using four SNP pairs. We used | D'| values of >0.5 to assign SNP locations to one haplotype block. SNPs with an r² value > 0.5 were selected as tagged. In the haplotype-based case-control analysis, haplotypes with a frequency of <0.01 were excluded. Logistic regression analysis was performed to assess the contribution of the major risk factors after constructing diplotypes for each subject by SNPAlyze version 8.2 (Dynacom, Yokohama, Japan). Statistical significance was established at P < 0.05. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS software for Windows, version 17.0 (SPSS, Chicago, IL).