Obesity and alcohol may be more likely to trigger a heart attack than 'bad' genes
Lifestyle factors such as a poor diet, smoking and a lack of exercise are more likely to trigger heart attacks than family history, the Daily Mail reports, citing a new study.
Researchers found that heart attacks are not as strongly linked to family history and genetics as previously thought.
Their findings will be welcome news to people with a family history of heart disease, or those who have been diagnosed with narrow arteries.
Scientists at the Intermountain Medical Centre Heart Institute in Murray, Utah, say for these people, a heart attack is not inevitable and their lifestyle choices and environment will greatly determine their fate.
Heart attacks are caused by the blood supply to the heart being suddenly interrupted.
The more risk factors for coronary heart disease a person has, the greater their chance of developing it and, in turn, suffering a heart attack.
Lifestyle triggers include smoking, a fatty diet and being obese, a lack of physical activity, excessive alcohol consumption and stress.
Together with his team, Dr Benjamin Horne, director of cardiovascular and genetic epidemiology at the centre, studied patients with different severities of coronary disease, some of whom who had suffered a heart attack.
They found while severe coronary artery disease can be inherited regardless of whether someone has a heart attack, the presence of heart attacks in people with less severe coronary disease was not clustered in families.
The findings were presented at the annual conference of the American Society of Human Genetics in San Diego.
‘This link between the registry and the medical records allowed us to look at information about both heart attacks and the degree of coronary disease,' explained Dr Horne.
‘That means we can compare heart attack patients to people with coronary disease who were free from heart attacks.’
The findings could help researchers design better genetic studies focused on heart attacks.
This, in turn, may help them find the limited set of genetic mutations that cause some people to be more susceptible to heart attacks.
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