Medical Breakthrough Could Combat Heart Disease

Doctors discover a gene mutation that lowers the risk of heart disease.
1:32 | 06/19/14


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Transcript for Medical Breakthrough Could Combat Heart Disease
To medical news and possible breakthrough in the fight against heart attacks. The leading killer in this country. Researchers have made a discovery that could lead to the first new drugs to combat heart disease in decades and ABC's chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser, I know you're excited. Tell us. It's exciting. This our blood we have different types of fat, cholesterol, triglycerides and others and most of the work on preventing heart disease has focused on cholesterol. They look at the genes of people who had very low triglycerides and found they had a mutation in a particular gene and if you had a mutation in that gene, your risk of heart disease was 40% lower than other people. That's a dramatic decline. So learning this could lead to a new class of drugs. How would that be different? The focus now has been on statins. We know people who take them to reduce heart disease and that deals mainly with cholesterol but we know that meme who are on statins if they have a high triglyceride are still at risk for a heart attack so this gives the people a target to say, can we focus on this gene and by doing that drop their triglycerides and lower their risk of heart disease further. If you have heart issues what's your advice? It's going to be years before this takes place, so a heart healthy life, you know, good diet and exercise, knowing your blood pressure and taking care of that and knowing your family history because that will predict a lot what your risk is.


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