Short
people face a greater lifetime risk of clogged arteries, according to a study
out Wednesday that confirmed the long-known link between height and heart
disease by examining genetics.
The
study is the first to show that the higher risk is primarily due to a variety
of genes that influence whether a person is tall or short, and not potentially
confounding factors like poverty or poor nutrition. The study led by
researchers at the University of Leicester is published in the New England
Journal of Medicine.
Researchers
examined 180 different genetics variants in a database of nearly 200,000 people
with and without coronary heart disease, which is caused by a buildup of plaque
in the arteries and can lead to heart attack. It is the most common cause of
early death worldwide.
They
found that every 2.5 inches (6.3 centimeters) in a person’s height affected
their risk of coronary heart disease by 13.5 per cent. As an example, a
five-foot (1.5 meter) tall person would have on average a 32 per cent higher
risk of developing coronary heart disease than a person who was five-foot-six
(1.68 meters), said the study.
“The
more height increasing genetic variants that you carry the lower your risk of
coronary heart disease,” said co-author Christopher Nelson, a British Heart
Foundation-funded lecturer at the University of Leicester.
“And
conversely if you were genetically shorter the higher your risk.” Researchers
hope that further study of the genes implicated in height and heart disease may
lead to better prevention and treatment in the future.
“For
more than 60 years it has been known that there is an inverse relationship
between height and risk of coronary heart disease,” said lead author Sir Nilesh
Samani, professor of cardiology at the University of Leicester. “Now, using a
genetic approach,” he said, researchers have shown that the “association
between shorter height and higher risk of coronary heart disease is a primary
relationship and is not due to confounding factors.”
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