Valentines Day, genes, smoking and heart disease!
Valentine’s Day – the special day we get loved up and girls get the flowers, chocolates and meals out that we crave for the remaining 364 days of the year!!
When you smokers reach out for that post-intimacy ciggie, best check out your genes to make sure it won’t be your last puff.
New evidence emerges from the Heart Research Follow-up Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center, that a common defect in the gene CETP (cholesteryl ester transfer protein) significantly increases a smoker’s risk of an early heart attack. CETP is a protein found in all people that controls cholesterol metabolism. Researchers say that as much as 60 to 70 percent of the population has this gene defect. Smokers with a common form of this gene are likely to suffer a heart attack 12 years earlier than a non-smoker, while smokers who do not carry this variant appear to be “protected” and have the same risk of heart attack as non-smokers.
CETP manages a person’s level of high-density lipoproteins (HDL), the “good cholesterol.” Unlike low-density lipoproteins (LDL), which build up plaque on artery walls and predispose a person to heart attacks or strokes, HDL helps filter LDL out of the blood and chips away at the plaque lining artery walls.
When CETP has a common defect, it makes the protein controlling HDL work on overdrive. This overactive protein more furiously “attacks” HDL, breaking it into smaller particles that are more easily cleared from the blood, leading to decreased HDL levels – and less good cholesterol.
“It’s this efficient removal of HDL caused by the CETP gene defect that puts people at higher risk of an early onset of heart disease,” says Atthur Moss MD, the Director of The Heart Follow Up Research Program. “The problem only gets worse for smokers who have this form of CETP, because smoking is known to also lower HDL levels. The cumulative effect is a dramatic drop in the age such smokers are likely to experience a heart attack – about a dozen years earlier than someone who also has the variant but does not smoke.”
Moss adds that the research also helps explain why some heavy smokers appear to beat the odds when it comes to heart disease.
Elaine Warburton www.geneticsandhealth.com
valentines day where all lovers are in the air, all sweet couples are very happy, and everywhere you go you will see flowers, chocolates in the street. because they say that when feb 14 comes, love is in the air..my opinions about smoking is that its not good to our health and as far as i know if we have to avoid it, do it as long as we are young to be safe in any other diseases that causes of smoking.