Genes Up Heart Attack Risk for African Americans

African Americans are more likely than European Americans to have variations in their genes that have been linked to an increased heart attack risk, according to a new report.

African Americans are more likely than European Americans to have variations in their genes that have been linked to an increased heart attack risk, according to a new report. The findings open up the possibility that genetic testing might one day be used to identify people with a high risk for heart disease. “This is not yet reality but one could easily imagine a panel of genetic variants that would help predict risk of coronary artery disease (CAD), or risk of events in those with known CAD,” Dr. David E. Lanfear from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, told Reuters Health. Lanfear and colleagues examined DNA from 95 healthy African Americans and 95 healthy European Americans for variations in three genes that have been found to correlate with heart attacks in Japanese subjects. The high-risk types of two of the three genes (termed MMP-3 and PAI-1) were found significantly more often in African Americans than in European Americans, the authors report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Moreover, having two copies of at least two high-risk genes was far more common among African Americans (51 percent) than among European Americans (3 percent), the report indicates. There is a large ongoing study “in which we will be connecting these and other variants to clinical outcomes in both African Americans and European Americans,” Lanfear concluded. “This will help determine if there is predictive value to these variants for those with established CAD.” (SOURCE: Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Reuters Health New : Will Boggs, MD: July 2004.)