Healthy lifestyle halves heart attack risk

A HEALTHY lifestyle can halve the chance of heart disease even for those genetically at risk, experts have found.

One person in five has a combination of genes that puts them at high risk of suffering a heart attack.

But a study led by experts at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital found even these people are still in control of their fate. Keeping fit, not smoking and staying slim cut their risk by nearly half, the researchers found.

The findings, based on data from more than 55 000 people, stresses the importance of lifestyle as a risk factor.

Lead author Dr Sekar Kathiresan, whose work is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, said: “The message is that DNA is not destiny. Many individuals – physicians and the public – have looked on genetic risk as unavoidable, but for heart attack that is not the case.”

The researchers, who presented their findings at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions in New Orleans, used the results of four huge datasets, which tracked different groups of US citizens for at least 20 years. Each participant was assigned a genetic risk score, based on whether they carried any of 50 gene variants linked to elevated heart attack risk.

Across the studies, those with the highest one-fifth of genetic scores were nearly twice as likely as those with the lowest fifth of scores to suffer a major coronary event. But when the scientists looked at lifestyle, they found this additional risk almost disappeared.

Of those with the highest-risk genes, if participants did not smoke, had a healthy diet and exercised, their chance of having a heart attack dropped by 46 percent – roughly the same risk as those without the dangerous genes. – Daily Mail