Analysis for interaction between interleukin-35 genes polymorphisms and risk factors on susceptibility to coronary heart disease in the Chinese Han population

The relationship between IL-35 genes polymorphism and susceptibility to coronary heart disease has not been tested in the largest Han population in China. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of interleukin-35 (IL-35) genes and its relationship with environment on the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).

We performed Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium test on the control group. The relationship between the four SNPs of IL-35 genes and the risk of coronary heart disease was studied by multivariate logistic regression. The best interaction was identified with generalized multifactor dimensionality reduction (GMDR). Logistic regression was used for investigation on association between four SNPs and CHD risk.

Logistic regression analysis showed that the C allele of rs428253 and the G allele of rs2243115 were independently correlated with increased risk of CHD, and adjusted ORs (95% CI) were 1.91 (1.28–2.64) and 1.80 (1.30–2.23), respectively. However, there was no significant association between CHD and rs4740 or rs568408. GMDR model indicated a best model for CHD risk consisted of rs428253 and current smoking, which scored 10/10 for both the sign test and cross-validation consistency (p = 0.010). Therefore, this overall multi-dimensional model had the highest cross-validation consistency, regardless of how the data were divided. This provided an evidence of gene–environment interaction effects. We also found that current smokers with rs428253-GC/CC genotype have the highest CHD risk, compared to never smokers with rs428253-GG genotype, OR (95% CI) = 3.04 (1.71–4.41), after adjustment for age, gender, hypertension, T2DM and alcohol consumption status.