Chips to find CAD

Over 100,000 deaths a year in the UK are caused by coronary artery disease (CAD) and a student from the University of Leicester aims to analyse DNA from over 20,000 patients to find out if there is a genetic predisposition to the disease.

Paraskevi Christofidou will be using  ‘chips’ – the latest in genetic techniques – to track and characterise up to 1 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs); a collection of small changes in a DNA sequence transmitted from one generation to another.

“Various risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, obesity and increased levels of cholesterol play a significant role in the progression of CAD,” Christofidou said, “There is also evidence that familial predisposition is a strong risk factor. Indeed your risk of CAD increases by almost 50% if one of your relatives has a history of heart disease.”

The study will analyse human DNA from more than 20,000 patients with CAD – a narrowing of the arteries in the heart – and 60,000 healthy controls.

Christofidou – a postgraduate student from the department of cardiovascular sciences – believes that SNPs will occur more frequently in patients with CAD than healthy controls, and that these are responsible for genetic predisposition to CAD.  She believes some of the variants may be so rare which is why such a large number of subjects need to be tested.

In the USA, one person dies of CAD every 34 seconds according to Christofidou. In the UK one in five deaths in men and one in six in women are caused by CAD.