Posted on 05/03/2007 7:05:54 PM PDT by blam
DNA test to identify heart attack risk
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 2:14am BST 04/05/2007
Scientists are to develop a DNA test to determine if someone has an inherited vulnerability to heart attacks, it was disclosed yesterday.
Researchers have identified a stretch of DNA as a major risk factor for coronary artery disease and heart attacks.
The test will help to identify people at high risk of heart disease, enabling them to change their lifestyles.
Heart disease kills more than 200,000 people in the UK each year.
The studies, which involved looking at the genetic make-up of about 40,000 people, revealed a single "letter" spelling mistake in the genetic code that placed people at an increased risk. In all, 25 per cent of people inherit two copies of this mistake.
They have a 30 to 60 per cent higher risk of heart disease than individuals who carry no such copies.
The DNA is estimated to account for approximately a fifth of heart attacks in people of European origin, and nearly a third of early-onset cases, in which men and women suffer a heart attack before the ages of 50 and 60 respectively.
This makes it the one of the most significant genetic risk factors found to date.
Dr Ruth McPherson, a director of the University of Ottawa, reported the find in the journal Science with Dr Jonathan Cohen at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and other colleagues in America.
Dr Kari Stefansson, head of deCODE genetics Inc, in Reykjavik, Iceland, plans to create the test to weigh up the inherited risk of heart attacks.
He said the work would take only a few months.
Our Y-chromosome is R1b (Irish) and our mtDNA is haplogroup V (Skolt Sa'ami, reindeer herders, northern Scandinavia))
And then, since that will be an outrage (and justly so), the government will have to subsidize...
I remember reading about this concern years ago when the prospect of DNA testing could lead to these sort of predictions.
Will you be required to submit a DNA test as a condition for employment? Scary.
one reason I like to say, “death to databases.”
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