For advertising information visit www.samplerpublications.com or call 859.225.4466 | February 2015
&
The Genetics of
Heart Disease
By Charles Sebastian, Staff Writer
It’s nearly unfathomable - the
thousands of medical advancements
that have come about in the last century. While heart disease and cancer
continue to claim more lives than
any other disease each year, advancements in both are nothing short of
miraculous. This is especially true of
heart disease, which today has more
hope than ever, extending life expectancies decades further than this time
even fifty years ago.
In 2007, Johns Hopkins Heart
and Vascular Institute funded their
Center for Inherited Heart Diseases.
The entire goal of this group is to
slow the progress of genetic and
familial heart disease through diagnosis and prevention. Some of the
conditions they screen for and treat
include: Arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (ARVD), Brugada
Syndrome, Cardiac amyloidosis,
Cardiac myxoma, Familial Dilated
Cardiomyopathy, Familial Valvular
heart disease, Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, Long QT Syndrome,
Loeyz-Dietz syndrome, Marfan syndrome, noncompaction cardiomyopathy, and restrictive cardiomyopathy.
Genetic counselors and cardiologists
discuss your case, order tests as
required, and give recommendations
from there.
In their paper, entitled “Genetic
Testing for Inherited Heart Disease,”
Alison L. Cirino and Carolyn Y. Ho
state that some heart diseases are
more easily diagnosed than others.
Practicing at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital in Boston, the pair claim
that for many heart diseases, tests are
not yet available. “Monogenic condi-
tions, meaning heart diseases that
are caused by just one or few genetic
changes, can sometimes be found
through today’s tests and technology,” they write. “Some conditions
like high blood pressure or coronary
artery disease run in families, but
probably result from a number of
different genetic changes that individually have a subtle effect, but work
collectively in a complex manner to
cause disease.” The conditions that
have multiple factors and variables
are always more difficult to spot, but
of even greater concern is raising
awarene