Carotid Atherosclerosis and Diabetes SNPs

The study used a case–control design to explore the relationships between DM SNPs and carotid atherosclerosis. The study performed stratified random sampling procedure to select study subjects from a community-based cohort, which enrolled middle-aged adults and elders from 3 townships in the northern coastal area of Taiwan [23 (link)]. From September 2010 to May 2013, a total of 1607 residents aged 40-to-74 years voluntarily provided informed consent and were enrolled. Twenty-seven subjects who lack good quality of recorded carotid ultrasound images and another 1 individual who lack blood pressure data were excluded. Another 40 subjects who had a positive history of physician-diagnosed myocardial infarction or had ever received a cardiac catheter or stent were excluded, leaving a total of 1539 subjects in the cohort.
Of the cohort members, 409 of them had detectable extracranial carotid plaques (CP). The study randomly selected 309 CP-positive individuals as the case group. The control group was a random sample of 439 individuals who had no detectable extracranial carotid plaque. The study complied with the 1975 Helsinki Declaration on ethics in medical research and were reviewed and approved by the institutional review boards of MacKay Medical College (No. P990001) and MacKay Memorial Hospital (No. 14MMHIS075).