Family history
Some
people who lead healthy lifestyles and have no known risk factors
can have heart attacks because the genes we inherit from our
parents can affect our chances of developing heart disease.
We fund research to help unravel how our
genes affect our chances of developing heart disease, so that we
can find new ways to treat and prevent the condition.
The family heart study
In the 1990s two BHF Professors - Nilesh Samani and Stephen
Ball set up the BHF/MRC funded Family
Heart Study to collect and compare DNA from 4,000 affected
individuals from 2,000 families. At the time it was the largest
ever study of families for heart disease.
Two volunteers that took part were brother
and sister Arvind and Jasu
Mistry, who both had heart attacks at a young age.
This research may not help me directly, but I hope it will find something that will help prevent my children suffering a heart attack
The
family heart study data were combined with thousands more heart
patients in the UK, Germany and the USA, and researchers have
identified at least 10 genes linked to increased heart attack
risk.
Understanding how these newly identified genes
contribute to disease will help provide new and more effective ways
to treat and prevent coronary artery disease. The information might
also, in the future, make it possible to tailor medical care to a
person’s unique genetic make-up.
Listen to
our podcast - Prof Samani talks about the latest
findings stemming from the Family Heart Study, and we meet
Arvind and Jasu Mistry who both suffered heart attacks in
middle-age and donated a sample of their DNA to help with the
study.
