Five new genetic variants linked to heart disease

Study finds five new genetic variants linked to heart disease. Five new genetic variants linked to heart disease have been identified in a meta-analysis of four large genome-wide association studies, published this week. By Sam Wong - Monday 7 March 2011 Five new genetic variants linked to heart disease have been identified in a meta-analysis of four large genome-wide association studies, published this week. The findings will guide research into new treatments for coronary heart disease, which kills 88,000 people in Britain each year. The discoveries add to 11 common variants previously shown to be associated with heart disease, and provide further evidence that many genes have a small but significant effect on heart disease risk. The Coronary Artery Disease (C4D) Genetics Consortium, co-led by groups at Imperial College London and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge , compared the DNA sequences of thousands of people with heart disease in European and South Asian populations with controls from the same ethnic groups. All of the variants linked to heart disease in the study appeared to be equally significant in people from European and South Asian ancestry.