Background Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the severe diseases that threaten human health worldwide. In addition, the associated rate of comorbidity with depression and anxiety is extremely high. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are a group of proteins that possesses cardiovascular and psychological protection properties. The objective of this study is to determine the association of the two most widely studied HSPs, namely, HSP70 and HSP90, with CAD comorbid depression and anxiety in a Chinese population. Methods A case-control study involving 271 CAD patients and 113 healthy individuals was conducted. The 271 CAD patients include individuals with (123) and without depression (148) and individuals with (57) and without anxiety (214). Ten single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for HSP70 and seven SNPs for HSP90 were selected and genotyped. Results Results revealed that the HSP70 rs10892958 C allele and HSP70 rs2236658 T allele were associated with a decreased risk of CAD (P < 0.05), whereas the G allele of the rs11218941 polymorphism was associated with an increased risk of CAD. The haplotype analysis results indicated that the haplotype TGGGC of the HSPA8 gene (coded the HSP70 family, rs4936770/rs4802/rs10892958/rs11218941/rs2236658) significantly increased the risk of CAD (P = 0.008). Among the patients with CAD, the carriers of the CC genotype for the HSP90 rs1042665 showed higher risks of anxiety than the carriers of another genotypes. However, no significant relationships were found among the CAD with depression and CAD without depression groups for the selected SNPs. These findings suggested that the genetic polymorphisms in the HSP gene, especially the HSPA8 of HSP70, contribute to CAD susceptibility and rs1042665 genetic polymorphisms might have an effect on the anxiety incidence among CAD patients.

Uric acid (UA) and HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) level are closely associated to the cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity. The UA/HDL-C ratio (UHR), a new parameter combination of serum UA and HDL-C, attracts attention for its association with metabolic and inflammatory conditions. There may exists the association between UHR and arterial stiffness. This study aims to explore the association between the UHR and brachial-ankle PWV (baPWV) and to determine whether or not UHR has effect on arterial stiffness. The present study included a total of 912 Japanese (592 men and 320 women), aged from 24 to 84, received a health medical checkup programme with an automatic waveform analyzer to measure baPWV and various standardized questionnaires in a medical center of Japan. Non-linear regression and threshold effect analysis were conducted to explore the association between UHR and baPWV. It was found that UHR was positively correlated with baPWV after adjusting for multiple confounders. A non-linear relationship (with a inflection point was 14.25) was found between UHR and baPWV. Subgroup analyses showed that the significant association between UHR and baPWV only existed in females group, no fatty liver group and normal BMI groups. This study revealed the nonlinear relationship between UHR and baPWV. A significant correlation between UHR and baPWV existed in females but not in males. Fatty liver status, BMI, and menopausal status may affect the above association.