Genetics are more likely to play a role in heart attack than in stroke
Millions of people buy Plavix to reduce their risk of experiencing a stroke or heart attack.
Millions of people buy Plavix to reduce their risk of experiencing a stroke or heart attack. According to a recent paper published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, it is much more likely to have a genetic predisposition for heart attack than for stroke.
Senior author Peter M. Rothwell and his colleagues from Oxford University reported that the association between a parent and a child experiencing a heart attack was much stronger than for a parent and child both having a stroke.
"That suggests that the susceptibility to stroke is less strongly inherited than the susceptibility to heart attack," Rothwell said. "We had found previously that much of the heritability of stroke is related to the genetics of high blood pressure, which doesn't seem to be the case for heart attack."
He added that hypertension appears to be linked more closely to stroke, which is why a family history of the condition may increase an individual's risk for the adverse event.
According to the researchers, the finding that genes play a much smaller role in stroke may mean that genetic studies of this illness are not crucial to the field.
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