Heart disease gene affects one in 100, say scientists

A gene that almost guarantees serious heart disease in middle age is carried by an estimated 60 million people around the world, a team of scientists has found.The one in 100 who inherit the mutation usually show few, if any, symptoms before their 40s, but become ill as they get older, with many later dying from heart failure.The discovery marks the strongest link yet that scientists have made between a person's genetic make-up and their risk of succumbing to heart disease.The risk of being born with the abnormal gene is substantially higher in people who can trace their ancestry back to the Indian subcontinent, where one in 25 inherit the mutation. "The bad news is that many of these mutation carriers have no warning that they are in danger," said Perundurai Dhandapany at Madurai Kamaraj University, a co-author of the study published in Nature Genetics.The mutation was originally identified in...

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