Sex Steroid Hormone Polymorphisms, High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol, and Apolipoprotein A-1 from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN)

Abstract 

We evaluated potential associations between single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variants in estrogen receptor (ERα and ERβ) genes, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, and apolipoprotein A-1 (apoA-1) concentrations in women of 4 races/ethnicities. Participants included 1,520 African American, Caucasian, Chinese, and Japanese women from the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) who were premenopausal or perimenopausal and who were also enrolled in the SWAN Genetics Study, which collected blood for lipid analyses and carried out lymphocyte transformation from which DNA was extracted and genotyped. We evaluated SNPs from ERα and ERβ genes (ESR1 and ESR2, respectively), including ESR1 rs9340799, ESR1 rs2234693, ESR1 rs728524, ESR1 rs3798577, ESR2 rs1255998, ESR2 rs1256065, and ESR2 rs1256030. The mean HDL cholesterol and apoA-1 values for these women were 1.47 mmol/L and 1.51 g/L, respectively. Japanese women with the ESR1 rs3798577 TC genotype had significantly lower apoA-1 (P=0.02) and HDL cholesterol levels (P=0.03) than did those with the TT genotype. African American women with the ESR1 rs728524 GG genotype had higher HDL cholesterol levels than did women with the AA or AG genotypes (P=0.05). ESR2 rs1256030 and ESR2 rs1256065 genotypes were associated with HDL cholesterol concentrations in Chinese women (P=0.05). Although associations were identified between the ESR1 and ESR2 SNP variants and lipids in these women, these associations were not consistently observed across the 4 racial/ethnic groups, nor were the associations consistently inclusive of both HDL cholesterol and apoA-1. These genetic variants provide limited evidence of associations with lipids that may help explain the cardioprotective effect of premenopausal status in women.

Keywords:  Apolipoprotein A-1 , Estrogen receptors , Genetics , High-density lipoprotein cholesterol , Single nucleotide polymorphisms