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Healthy Lifestyle

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Obesity and alcohol may be more likely to trigger a heart attack than 'bad' genes

Lifestyle factors such as a poor diet, smoking and a lack of exercise are more likely to trigger heart attacks than family history, a new study has warned. 

Researchers found that heart attacks are not as strongly linked to family history and genetics as previously thought.

Their findings will be welcome news to people with a family history of heart disease, or those who have been diagnosed with narrow arteries.

Scientists at the Intermountain Medical Centre Heart Institute in Murray, Utah, say for these people, a heart attack is not inevitable and their lifestyle choices and environment will greatly determine their fate.

Heart attacks are caused by the blood supply to the heart being suddenly interrupted.

The more risk factors for coronary heart disease a person has, the greater their chance of developing it and, in turn, suffering a heart attack. 

Lifestyle triggers include smoking, a fatty diet and being obese, a lack of physical activity, excessive alcohol consumption and stress.

Together with his team, Dr Benjamin Horne, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the centre, studied patients with different severities of coronary disease, some of whom who had suffered a heart attack.

They found while severe coronary artery disease can be inherited regardless of whether someone has a heart attack, the presence of heart attacks in people with less severe coronary disease was not clustered in families.

 

The findings were presented at the annual conference of the American Society of Human Genetics in San Diego.

‘This link between the registry and the medical records allowed us to look at information about both heart attacks and the degree of coronary disease,' explained Dr Horne. 

‘That means we can compare heart attack patients to people with coronary disease who were free from heart attacks.’ 

The findings could help researchers design better genetic studies focused on heart attacks.

This, in turn, may help them find the limited set of genetic mutations that cause some people to be more susceptible to heart attacks.

Dr Horne said: ‘Because coronary disease and heart attacks are so closely related, researchers in the past have assumed they’re the same thing.

‘They thought that if someone had coronary disease, they would eventually have a heart attack. 

'This finding may help people realise that, through their choices, they have greater control over whether they ultimately have a heart attack.’

‘Although in almost all situations someone needs to have some level of coronary disease in order to have a heart attack, some people will have a heart attack when they only have mild coronary disease where there’s only a small amount of narrowing of the artery, while others will have a heart attack with severe coronary narrowing.’

Researchers have now found 46 genetic mutations associated with coronary disease.

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