Heart disease is the number one killer in Canada. Doctors say you will reduce the risk and live longer if you eat right, quit smoking and get regular exercise. But the most important risk factor for heart problems is the one thing you can’t change: Your family history. Or maybe you can, according to some new research.
Turns out that the single-biggest factor in figuring out how long you’ll live.is the health and longevity of your parents. That’s according to a major study of 190,000 people age 55 to 73 living in the United Kingdom. The results were just published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School, plus colleagues in France, the U.S. and India conducted the study over an eight-year period. People whose parents lived a long time had a lower incidence of heart disease, heart failure, stroke, high blood pressure and heart rhythm disturbances. The risk of dying from heart disease was 20 per cent lower for each decade that at least one parent lived beyond the age of 70.
What is it about having parents who live longer that protects people from heart disease? That’s the key question. Earlier this year the same group of researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School who did the longevity study published a paper in the journal Aging. They looked at 75,000 offspring of long-lived parents. What they found is that the parents were more likely to have a bunch of genes that protected them and their children from atherosclerosis, high blood pressure, obesity, high cholesterol and triglycerides and type 1 diabetes. Some of the genes that protect people from heart disease were already known. But the researchers discovered some new genes that tip the odds of survival in your favor.
If you can’t choose your parents, you might be tempted to dismiss this kind of research. Big mistake! It’s true that you can’t change your parents but the point of this research is to learn the genetic secrets of long-lived people and give them to everyone – especially the people have a strong family history of heart disease. Researchers have identified the genetic molecular pathways involved in heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases. That research has led to the discovery of growth factors – chemicals that can get the heart to grow new blood vessels, increase the strength of failing heart muscle, stabilize and control irregular heart rhythms and even repair damaged hearts.
As a long-term observer of gene therapy research into heart disease, I’ve been disappointed by the early clinical results. The early research in a petri dish and in animal studies was extremely promising. But the first clinical trials in humans produced modest benefit if any, with some doing more harm than good. That forced researchers to identify the many things that went wrong. For instance, to carry a new gene into the body, researchers piggy-back it onto a virus that “infects” the heart with the gene. Depending on the virus, the body’s immune system might attack the virus and prevent the gene from doing its thing. Another challenge is coaxing the new gene to start working to protect the heart. Some of those challenges have been addressed, but much more work needs to be done.
The current research into gene therapy for heart failure is very promising. It will likely be available in the next few years. That said, no gene therapy will give us license to thumb our noses at the usual risk factors for heart disease any time soon. In the longevity study I talked about, things like smoking, low physical activity and obesity, were still important.
You may remember hearing in the media about telomeres – bits of DNA at the end of human chromosomes that promote longevity. A 2013 pilot study by Dean Ornish and colleagues found that a regimen of diet, exercise, stress management and other measures increases telomere length, and presumably, longevity. More than that, there’s evidence that changing your lifestyle helps you live longer – regardless of your genetic risk.
Gene therapy and living better sound like a recipe for a long and healthy life.