in any of our own patient cohorts (20209C fi A was not tested). At the level of the caucasian population, these variations will therefore not contribute significantly to the observed variation in prothrombin levels and to the development of venous thrombosis. However, this does not mean that such variations are not functional. Our results showed that the A to C change at position 20207 and the A to G change at position 20218 do not result in major changes in the position of the poly(A) attachment site, in the effectiveness of polyadenylation or in protein expression. Based on the results obtained with our model system, we would expect that these mutations do not contribute to the thrombotic risk of the patients carrying them. This is in contrast with our results on the 20210G fi A mutation [10], using the same experimental setup as used for the analysis of the present two variations, and with the results of Danckwardt et al. [9], who showed that the 20221C fi T change also results in increased activity of the prothrombin polyadenylation region.
References