The characteristics of the patients studied are summarized in Table 1. The patients with MI were younger, predominantly male and had a higher incidence of cigarette smoking than those without MI. They also had higher total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels, and longer duration of DM2 (Table 1). There were no significant differences in the incidence of hypertension, HDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels between the two groups (Table 1).

      The frequency of the G(–308)A polymorphism is shown in Table 2. These were compatible with the Hardy-Weinberg expectations. There was no association between the polymorphism and MI in DM2 patients (OR = 0.8, 95% CI = 0.5-1.3, p = 0.4 for the recessive model and OR = 0.8, 95% CI = 0.2-2.8, p = 0.7 for the dominant model). The allele frequencies in patients with MI were: G 247 (87.0%) and A 37 (13.0%), and allele frequencies in patients without MI were: G 550 (88.7%) and A 70 (11.3%); the difference was not statistically significant.