Coronary artery disease (CAD), including its most severe complication, myocardial infarction (MI), is the leading cause of death in the industrialized world. As the most serious clinical manifestation of CAD, MI is the condition of irreversible necrosis of the heart muscle that results from prolonged ischemia. Approximately 90 % of MI results from the formation of an acute thrombus that obstructs an atherosclerotic coronary artery. The proteasome system is a proteolytic pathway that regulates the expression of genes involved in inflammation. Recently, an association of a functional sequence variation, -8C/G, in the human proteasome subunit alpha type 6 gene (PSMA6) with the susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD) was reported. After that, several validation studies have been conducted among various ethnic populations, but the results have been inconsistent. G allele of PSMA6-8C/G polymorphism is a risk factor associated with increased CAD susceptibility, but these associations vary in different ethnic populations.