Bick AG, et al. - Researchers examined 30,903 African American individuals in the Million Veteran Program to assess if APOL1 G1/G2 alleles were associated with coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease, and stroke. In this time-to-event analysis of retrospective electronic health record (EHR) data performed using Cox proportional hazard and competing risks Fine and Gray sub-distribution hazard models, they identified 3,941 (13%) individuals who carried the two APOL1 risk allele high-risk genotype. Results revealed a modest link between APOL1 risk variants and cardiovascular disease; the known APOL1 association with chronic kidney disease seems to mediate this relationship. Those with normal kidney function at baseline and two risk alleles had slightly greater risk of developing CAD vs those with no risk alleles; comparable, modest correlations were seen with incident stroke and PAD.