Healthy Lifestyle Can Cut Genetic Heart Disease Risk

14 Nov 2016 --- Following a healthy lifestyle can cut in half the probability of a heart attack or similar event, even for those who have a high genetic risk, according to a study led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

The report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, will coincide with a presentation at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions. 

“The basic message of our study is that DNA is not destiny,” says Sekar Kathiresan, MD, director of the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), senior author of the NEJM report. 

“Many individuals - both physicians and members of the general public - have looked on genetic risk as unavoidable, but for heart attack that does not appear to be the case.” 

In order to investigate whether a healthy lifestyle can mitigate genetic risk, the multi-institutional research team analyzed genetic and clinical data from more than 55,000 participants in four large-scale studies. 

Each participant in the current analysis was assigned a genetic risk score, based on whether they carried any of 50 gene variants that previous studies associated with elevated heart attack risk.

Based on data gathered when participants entered each study, the investigators used four lifestyle factors -- no current smoking; lack of obesity, defined as a body mass index less than 30; physical exercise at least once a week, and a healthy dietary pattern -- to determine a lifestyle score, whether participants had a favorable (three or four healthy factors), intermediate (two factors) or unfavorable (one or no healthy factors) lifestyle. 

The research team investigated how each individual's genetic risk score and lifestyle factors related to the incidence of heart attack, the need for procedures designed to open blocked coronary arteries, or sudden cardiac death. 

Among participants in the BioImage study, genetic and lifestyle factors were compared to the extent of atherosclerotic disease in the coronary arteries at baseline. 

Across all three prospective studies, a higher genetic risk score significantly increased the incidence of coronary events - as much as 90 percent in those at highest risk. 

While known risk factors such as a family history and elevated LDL cholesterol were also associated with an elevated genetic risk score, genetic risk was the most powerful contributor to cardiac risk.

Similarly, each healthy lifestyle factor reduced risk, and the unfavorable lifestyle group also had higher levels of hypertension, diabetes and other known risk factors upon entering the studies. 

Within each genetic risk category, the presence of lifestyle factors significantly altered the risk of coronary events to such an extent that following a favorable lifestyle could reduce the incidence of coronary events by 50 percent in those with the highest genetic risk scores. 

Among participants in the BioImage study, both genetic and lifestyle factors were independently associated with levels of calcium-containing plaque in the coronary arteries, and healthy lifestyle factors were associated with less extensive plaque within each genetic risk group.

“Some people may feel they cannot escape a genetically determined risk for heart attack, but our findings indicate that following a healthy lifestyle can powerfully reduce genetic risk,” says Kathiresan, who is director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and an associate professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. 

“Now we need to investigate whether specific lifestyle factors have stronger impacts and conduct studies in more diverse populations, since most of the participants in these studies are white.”