... possible that the plasma BNP level is not an accurate reflection of the function of the NPPB gene. In the present study, the overall distribution of the VNTR genotype and the allele frequency were ... School of Medicine, Tokyo, Ja-pan 3. Division of General Medicine, Department of Medicine, Nihon University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan Correspondence to: Tomohiro Nakayama M.D., Division of ... sequences may function as transcriptional or translational regulators, and that they may modify the function of a protein when the tandemly repeated region lies within the coding re-gion of the...