... mainly as cardiac hormones and are produced primarily by the atria and ventricles, respectively, whereas C-type natriuretic peptide is expressed mainly in the brain [4,5]. BNP, which was originally ... Int. J. Med. Sci. 2007, 4 148Statistical analysis Data are presented as the mean ± SD. The Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was assessed by doing chi-square (χ2) analysis. Differences in the clinical ... BNP assay kit, Shionogi Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) as de-scribed previously [12]. Polymerase chain reaction - single strand confor-mation polymorphism (PCR-SSCP) Genomic DNA was extracted from...