Blog Post Author: Reza Ghasemi
As per an article by Michael Eisenstein published in Nature on June 9th 2021 (cited below):
Blood pressure, cholesterol levels, diet and exercise, these are the main words related to risk of coronary heart disease; the condition of narrowing heart vessels, which can lead to heart attack and failure—the main cause of death in our era.
But could you imagine a system which is capable of ranking the risk of heart disease? A system to recognize how vulnerable we are to develop heart disease in our life.
This is the main topic of this article. If genetics can bring us a method of identifying personal data, could it be the way to identify how much we are at risk of developing heart disease (noting that this condition often occurs in middle age)? The answer is yes. “Genetics can be the first thing that is identified as abnormal for a patient, and that can start the conversation,” says Pradeep Natarajan, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Noting that genetic variations are accounted for affecting half of the risk of developing heart disease in one’s life, researchers are now trying to determine a polygenic risk score for this disease. This could be the cornerstone of the knowledge that healthcare services managers need to identify individuals who require earlier intervention and follow-up to control incidence of heart disease.
Information Sourced From: Eisenstein, M. (2021). Ranking the risk of heart disease. Nature, 594(7862). doi:10.1038/d41586-021-01452-7
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