1 in 5 men have DNA that puts them at greater risk of a heart attack

One in five men has changes in their DNA that increase the risk of heart disease which may explain why they are more likely to have a heart attack than women, a study has found. According to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, around 20 per cent of British men carry a variation of the male-only Y chromosome that greatly increases the risk of them developing heart disease, the research has found. The increased risk remained even when men did not have high blood pressure, smoking or high cholesterol. The findings could explain why men suffer from heart disease at a younger age than women and why several men in the same family may have heart attacks at a young age. Dr Hélène Wilson, Research Advisor at the British Heart Foundation (BHF), which was the main funder of the study, said:“This study shows that genetic variations on the Y chromosome – the piece of DNA that only men have – can greatly increase a man’s risk of coronary heart disease. “Lifestyle choices such as poor diet and smoking are major causes, but inherited factors carried in DNA are also part of the picture. The next step is to identify specifically which genes are responsible and how they might increase heart attack risk. “This discovery could help lead to new treatments for heart disease in men, or tests that could tell men if they are at particularly high risk of a heart attack. “One of the fascinating things about the study is that it might provide a partial explanation why Northwestern European men have more heart attacks than their counterparts in other parts of the world.” Coronary heart disease is the cause of heart attacks, which claim the lives of around 50,000 British men every year. Identifying men carrying the variation, known as haplogroup I, could lead to more targeted preventive treatment, researchers believe. After cholesterol levels, carrying the haplogroup I chromosome was the strongest predictor for heart disease the researchers said. The study, involving more than 3,000 men in Britain, was conducted by a team at University of Leicester and University of Ballarat in Australia and may also help explain why heart disease is more common in northern European countries compared with the south as the Y variation is more common there. The findings were published in The Lancet medical journal. Men carrying the haplogroup I had differences in their immune system and how it reacted to infection when compared with men with other haplogroups. Lead author Dr Maciej Tomaszewski, of the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences at University of Leicester wrote: "Our study is the first to evaluate associations between main European Y chromosome lineages and coronary artery disease as well as its underlying risk factors. "The most important finding from our analysis is that haplogroup I is associated with significantly increased risk of coronary artery disease compared with other ancient lineages of the Y chromosome." In an accompanying comment article Dr Virginia Miller from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said: “It would be interesting to examine whether existing algorithms assessing individual risk of coronary artery disease for men could be improved by changing the question ‘Did your mother or father have a heart attack before age 60?’ to ‘Did your father have a heart attack before the age of 60?’ "Both sex and family do matter in inheritance of coronary artery disease.”