Atti del 52° Congresso Nazionale: Società Italiana di Igiene, Medicina Preventiva e Sanità Pubblica (SItI)

A case-cohort design nested in the Moli-sani cohort study was used. A subcohort of 1,146 subjects (mean ± SD age 55.3 ± 11.7 years; men 47.7%) was randomly selected from the whole study population (n = 24,325; recruitment years 2005-2010, Molise Region). All CVD events occurred during a median follow-up of 4.3 years (n = 534 validated myocardial infarctions or strokes; 5.1:1,000 person-years), were selected as case group. Biobank samples were used to genotype 14 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the genes NMU (encoding for Neuromedin U), NMUR1 and NMUR2 (receptors) and NMS (Neuromedin S). Methylation levels at 17 CpG sites of two NMU regions (promoter and intergenic) were measured using pyrosequencing. The laboratory analyses are on-going. The associations between SNPs (codominant model) or methylation sites (z-scores) and fatal or non-fatal CVD events were calculated (hazard ratios -HR, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, blood pressure, glucose, lipid levels and CVD history) using SAS software. Multivariate analyses (backward elimination) were performed and a score was computed using beta estimates of risk variants associated with the events at p < 0.1.