Common genes in coronary artery disease from Europe, Asia and North America regardless of race and lifestyle.

OBJECTIVE Coronary artery disease (CAD) remains one of the major causes of death worldwide. Despite considerable advances in the prevention and treatment of CAD, its complications, morbidity and mortality still remain very high, and vary widely across different ethnic groups. MATERIALS AND METHODS To detect genes involved in the development of CAD, we collected gene expression studies in the blood samples of CAD patients from different continents by searching the Gene Expression Omnibus database (GEO), performed a comparative analysis of gene expression between CAD patients and normal controls (NC) in each continent and identified the common set of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between CAD patients and NC across different continents. PPI networks of the common set of DEGs were established by Cytoscape software to understand their biological role in CAD. RESULTS A total of 575, 868 and 476 genes were identified to be significantly differentially expressed between CAD patients and NC in Asia, Europe and North America. 24 genes were found common in three different continents, and 6 genes were previously linked to CAD or atherosclerosis. In the PPIs network the significant hub proteins contained IRF4 (Degree = 23), PLAUR (Degree = 17) and HIST1H2AE (Degree = 15). CONCLUSIONS Not only did we detect gene expression differences in the blood samples between CAD and NC in Asia, Europe and North America population, but analysis of the three population groups revealed a common set of 24 genes regardless of differences related to race, ethnicity, lifestyle, and environmental factor which may provide key factors to understand the pathogenesis of CAD and lead to development of diagnostic markers and/or effective therapeutic strategies.