A new study reveals that individuals with a variant in a common gene run a three times greater risk of having a heart attack.

It is already known that the sex hormone estrogen has many different effects in the body. When it binds to proteins called estrogen receptors, other genes - some of which regulate heart disease risk factors - are activated. Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that a variant form of the estrogen receptor gene itself has an important impact on the risk for heart disease.

They looked at a group of nearly 2,000 people who had been participating in the long-running Framingham Heart Study. They found that 20 per cent of the participants had inherited two copies of this variant in the estrogen receptor - one from each parent. Analysis and exclusion of other risk factors showed that men in this group had three times the risk of having a heart attack, compared to those with other variants of this gene. Too few women had heart attacks in this group for any conclusion to be drawn about the risk for females carrying this variant. The study underlies the important of estrogen in heart function; further research may help explain the impact of estrogen replacement therapy on heart disease risk among women.

Source

Journal of the American Medical Association 5th November 2003