Geneticists uncover heart disease gene.Geneticists have discovered a gene they say could account for roughly half of all cases of the blood vessel-clogging disorder atherosclerosis, the major cause of heart attacks. Patsy M. Nishina and Jurgen K. Naggert of the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor report that a gene called atherosclerosis susceptibility, or ATHS ATHS Atherosclerosis Susceptibility ATHS American Truck Historical Society ATHS Arsenal Technical High School (Indiana) ATHS Airborne Target Handover System (US DoD) ATHS American Technology Honor Society , causes a set of characteristics that trebles an individual's risk of myocardial infarction. These characteristics include upper-body obesity, low concentrations of high-density lipoprotein (HDL (Hardware Description Language) A language used to describe the functions of an electronic circuit for documentation, simulation or logic synthesis (or all three). Although many proprietary HDLs have been developed, Verilog and VHDL are the major standards. ) in the blood, high blood concentrations of fatty compounds, and a preponderance of the small, dense form of low-density lipoprotein (LDL LDL - ["LDL: A Logic-Based Data-Language", S. Tsur et al, Proc VLDB 1986, Kyoto Japan, Aug 1986, pp.33-41]. ) in the blood. Together they are called an atherogenic ath·er·o·gen·ic adj. Initiating, increasing, or accelerating atherogenesis. atherogenic adjective Referring to the ability to initiate or accelerate atherogenesis—the deposition of atheromas, lipids, and lipoprotein profile. An estimated 30 percent of the U.S. population has this profile. Nishina and Naggert - together with researchers at the Children's Hospital Oakland Children's Hospital Oakland, full name Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland, in Oakland, California is the only independent children’s hospital in Northern California. It is a Level I pediatric trauma center. (Calif.) Research Institute and the Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) Laboratory - studied the incidence of the atherogenic lipoprotein profile among 72 members of 11 different families. By analyzing the pattern of how the profile passed down from generation to generation in these families, they determined it is caused by a single, dominant gene. The researchers reported in the Jan. 15 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences. that this inheritance pattern suggests that the ATHS gene lies on chromosome 19, near the gene for the LDL receptor. Body cells use this receptor to remove LDL cholesterol from the blood. Beverly J. Paigen, the Jackson Laboratory scientist who directs Nishina and Naggert's research, says a genetic phenomenon called incomplete penetrance could account for the fact that myocardial infarctions strike mostly men and postmenopausal women. Sex hormones and diet probably also influence the effects of the gene, she adds. |
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