1) Dear editorial board of European Journal of Cardiology,

Please find enclosed the manuscript: “The angiotensin-converting enzyme is not a risk factor for myocardial infarction in French individuals”, by Sarah H., et al., to be submitted as a Short Communication to the European Journal of Neurology for consideration of publication. All co-authors have seen and agree with the contents of the manuscript and there is no financial interest to report. We certify that the submission is original work and is not under review at any other publication.

In this manuscript, we report the results of the first study on the genetic and functional roles of the ACE on the risk of suffering a myocardial infarction in the French population. Indeed, we genotyped the rs4341 polymorphism in 531 IS cases and 549 healthy controls, and then performed functional studies by measuring serum ACE protein level and activity in healthy controls, stroke patients at baseline and stroke patients 24h after stroke symptoms onset. The results from our study did not reveal any association of the ACE variant with myocardial infarction, although it affected ACE protein level, and ischemic stroke patients showed lower ACE level than controls in the acute phase but not in the chronic phase.

We believe that our findings could be of interest to the readers of European Journal of Cardiology because they bring new and strong evidence that the ACE gene and protein are not a risk factor for myocardial infarction.

We hope that the editorial board will agree on the interest of this study.

Sincerely yours,

Sarah H. on behalf of the authors.

Corresponding author: Sarah Hamilton at Cardiovascular Research Laboratory, Marie Curie Research Institute, 75000, Paris, France, xxx@mariecurie.fr, phone number: +33582246xxx, fax number: +33582246xxx.