Introduction: Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) continues to be on the rise not only in the Western developed world but also affecting the South Asian race, particularly Bangladeshis. The objectives of this study were as follows: To determine whether or not risk factors of Bangladeshis differ from non-Bangladeshis, whether there is any difference in the extent of CAD for both groups, and if there are risk factors that can significantly affect the extent of CAD Methods: All patients with a diagnosis of CAD admitted to our 800-bed tertiary care hospital between January 2001 and December 2015 were retrospectively analyzed. We reviewed the age, sex, body-mass index (BMI), cardiac risk factors such as family history of CAD, dyslipidemia, hypertension, diabetes and smoking. We also reviewed coronary angiographic findings of these consecutive 150 Bangladeshis and a randomly selected group of 193 non-Bangladeshis. Results: A total of 343 medical records were evaluated, this included two groups: 193 non-Bangladeshis and 150 Bangladeshi subjects. The Bangladeshi group was older than the non-Bangladeshi group (63.49 vs 59.22, p-value=0.001), and included a larger proportion of males than the non-Bangladeshi group (28.7% vs 15.68%, p-value=0.0116). Bangladeshi subjects are more likely to be smokers than non-Bangladeshi (11.75% vs 6.67%, χ2=12.7, p-value=0.0004). Non-obstructive, 1-vessel, 2-vessel and 3-vessel accounts for 13.33%, 36.67%, 22%, and 28% for Bangladeshis, and 16.39%, 20.77% 34.43% and 28.42% for non-Bangladeshis, respectively. The difference of extent of CAD is significant between two groups (χ2 =12.397, p-value=0.0061). The findings suggest that Bangladeshi ethnicity has almost 2 times the likelihood of having 1-vessel CAD at coronary angiography (OR=2.361, 95% CI 1.452-3.839, p=0.0005). Conclusion: This study is a pivotal starting point for further evaluating the link between Bangladeshis and CAD. In our study we found that being Bangladeshi increases the risk of having CAD and may be an independent risk factor for multi-vessel CAD.

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The precise role of Huntingtin Associated Protein 1 (HAP1) is not known but studies have shown that it is important for early development and survival. A Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) ortholog of HAP1 (T27A3.1 also called trak-1) has been found and is expressed in a subset of neurons. Potential behavioral functions of three knockout lines of T27A3.1 were examined. Based on its suspected role in mice, we hypothesized that T27A3.1 might be involved in egg hatching and early growth, mechanosensation, chemosensation, sensitivity to osmolarity and synaptic transmission. Our studies show that the knockout worms are significantly different from the wildtype worms in only the synaptic transmission test which was measured by adding aldicarb, an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. The change in function was determined by measuring the number of worms paralyzed. However, when the T27A3.1 worms were tested for egg hatching and early growth, mechanosensation, chemosensation and sensitivity to osmolarity, there were no significant differences between the knockout and wildtype worms.

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