Heart disease risk up with family history
Source: Agencies |
August 25, 2012, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IF you have a relative who died of heart disease before age 60, your own risk of early heart trouble is higher as well, a study involving millions of people in Denmark over three decades has determined.
Family history of premature heart disease has long been considered a risk factor for heart problems in future generations, and the new study strengthens this evidence.
Researchers found that people with a parent or sibling who died young of heart problems were roughly twice as likely as others to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease - where "plaques" build up in the heart arteries, raising the risk of heart attack before age 50.
They also had double the risk of suffering a ventricular arrhythmia, an often fatal rhythm disturbance in the heart's main pumping chamber.
"As with other chronic diseases, people should try to find out what they can about their family history," Mattis Flyvholm Ranthe, the lead researcher on the study, said in an e-mail.
Researchers at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen combed through public health data on almost 4 million Danish citizens born after 1949.
Between 1978 and 2008, almost 130,000 of them were diagnosed with some form of cardiovascular disease before age 50. Those odds were heightened when a first-degree relative had died of heart problems before hitting 60.
But those risks also were elevated when a second-degree relative, such as a grandparent or half-sibling, had died young.
The risk of coronary disease, for example, was 43 percent higher in people with one second-degree relative who had died before age 60.
"This study tells us that a grandparent's history is meaningful too," said Amit Khera, who directs the preventative cardiology program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Family history of premature heart disease has long been considered a risk factor for heart problems in future generations, and the new study strengthens this evidence.
Researchers found that people with a parent or sibling who died young of heart problems were roughly twice as likely as others to be diagnosed with coronary heart disease - where "plaques" build up in the heart arteries, raising the risk of heart attack before age 50.
They also had double the risk of suffering a ventricular arrhythmia, an often fatal rhythm disturbance in the heart's main pumping chamber.
"As with other chronic diseases, people should try to find out what they can about their family history," Mattis Flyvholm Ranthe, the lead researcher on the study, said in an e-mail.
Researchers at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen combed through public health data on almost 4 million Danish citizens born after 1949.
Between 1978 and 2008, almost 130,000 of them were diagnosed with some form of cardiovascular disease before age 50. Those odds were heightened when a first-degree relative had died of heart problems before hitting 60.
But those risks also were elevated when a second-degree relative, such as a grandparent or half-sibling, had died young.
The risk of coronary disease, for example, was 43 percent higher in people with one second-degree relative who had died before age 60.
"This study tells us that a grandparent's history is meaningful too," said Amit Khera, who directs the preventative cardiology program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
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