February 9, 2012

Male Genes May Explain Higher Heart Disease Risk

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Although heart disease is the leading killer of women as well as of men, two heart disease patients out of every three are male, and heart disease strikes men 10 to 15 years earlier than it does women. No one really knows why. Now, a new study reports that part of the answer may lie on the Y chromosome, the one chromosome unique to men. In the study, published on Wednesday in The Lancet, researchers found that nearly all British men have one of two variants of a cluster of genes on their Y chromosome…But Virginia M. Miller, a heart disease researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who wrote an editorial that accompanied the paper, said in an interview that the work “puts a whole different perspective on some risk factors for heart disease in men.”

NY Times, by Gina Kolata, 02/08/2012

Additional coverage: GP Online

Tags: Cardiology, heart disease, Mayo Clinic Rochester, Research, The Lancet, Virginia M. Miller, Y chromosome

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