Genetic errors identified in a new study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may reduce risk of heart attacks and serve as a basis for developing new drugs designed to prevent heart disease.<\/p>\n
To reduce risk of heart attack, the benefits of a healthy lifestyle are clear. But genetics can still stack the deck. Some people\u2019s genes bestow a natural advantage \u2014 or disadvantage \u2014 in protecting against heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide.<\/p>\n
Now, a new study that included genetic data from more than 190,000 people has identified two genes that, when altered in specific ways, either promote or undermine cardiovascular health. The findings may help guide efforts to design new preventive drugs, similar to the way statins now are prescribed to lower \u201cbad\u201d cholesterol to reduce the risk of heart disease.<\/p>\n
The research is from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Broad Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe identified genetic variation in several genes that associated with protection from coronary heart disease,\u201d said first author Nathan O. Stitziel, MD, PhD, a Washington University cardiologist and assistant professor of medicine and genetics. \u201cOur findings support the idea that therapies focused on a major pathway regulating triglycerides should help prevent the buildup of plaque in the heart\u2019s coronary arteries and protect against heart attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n
To identify genes that might be relevant for drug discovery, the investigators plumbed DNA data from patients with coronary disease and from healthy controls. They searched across more than 220,000 genetic variants that altered proteins to identify those that appeared to influence heart disease risk. Errors in proteins can have major physiologic consequences.<\/p>\n
As part of the study, the researchers confirmed past work identifying genes already shown to confer an advantage or a vulnerability in protecting against heart disease risk, and they implicated two new ones \u2014 ANGPTL4 and SVEP1. Rare errors in ANGPTL4 were associated with reduced risk of coronary artery disease. The reduction varied from 14 percent for a small error in the gene to cutting risk by about 50 percent when an entire copy of the gene was disabled. The other gene, SVEP1, showed the opposite correlation \u2014 a rare error increased risk of coronary artery disease by about 14 percent.<\/p>\n
While ANGPTL4 has been the subject of much study, the other gene newly implicated in cardiovascular health is a bit of a mystery. In the new study, Stitziel and his colleagues showed that the error in SVEP1 also was linked to higher blood pressure in their study populations, but beyond that there are few clues to what it\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n
In contrast, ANGPTL4 has long been known to play a role in processing triglycerides, a type of fat that circulates in the bloodstream. Doctors measure levels of triglycerides as a marker of heart disease risk, though whether these fats play a role in causing plaque to build up in arteries historically has been a matter of debate. ANGPTL4\u2019s role in processing triglycerides is part of a system called the lipoprotein lipase (LPL) pathway. Blocking ANGPTL4 actually opens up this pathway, allowing the body to process triglycerides from the diet and get them out of the bloodstream.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gene\u2019s association with lower triglycerides has been known for a while,\u201d said Stitziel, who also sees patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. \u201cBut for a long time it was not clear that high triglycerides were a cause of coronary disease rather than a marker of it. Now we know that errors in ANGPTL4 associate with both reduced triglycerides and lower risk of coronary disease. This is another piece of the puzzle that points to a causal role for triglycerides in coronary disease.\u201d\nWashington University School of Medicine in St. Louis<\/link>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Genetic errors identified in a new study led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis may reduce risk of heart attacks and serve as a basis for developing new drugs designed to prevent heart disease. To reduce risk of heart attack, the benefits of a healthy lifestyle are clear. But genetics can still […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinlabint.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}