An interdisciplinary research team from the Medical Faculty of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) has been able to prove that a person’s lifestyle is not the only factor responsible for the calcification of coronary vessels. So are gene variants of the G protein signaling pathway. For their findings, the researchers analyzed 3,108 randomly selected participants of the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study over 5 years.
Heart disease is considered a leading cause of death, e.g., from myocardial infarction, and is often a consequence of coronary artery disease (CAD). CHD is triggered by hardening of the arteries. When it comes to reasons for the degree of calcification and its progression, medicine has so far looked to classic risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes or smoking. “However, these factors alone cannot explain the different degrees of arteriosclerosis,” says PD Dr. Stefanie Klenke, senior physician at the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at Essen University Hospital. She and her colleagues suspected an inherited susceptibility, i.e. the cause could lie in the encoded genes in the DNA. They focused on genes of the guanine nucleotide-binding proteins, or G proteins for short, which receive, translate and transmit important signals in cells. As is already known, however, this communication can be disrupted by functionally effective genetic variants: These so-called risk alleles potentially harm the body.
The researchers found that risk alleles in the G protein signaling pathway make more severe and faster calcification of the heart arteries significantly more likely – and this is independent of classic risk factors. “Having already demonstrated the importance of genetic variants of the G protein signaling pathway in cardiac surgery, our results point to a particular significance of these gene variants also for the progression of coronary artery disease itself,” summarizes Prof. Jürgen Peters, Director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.
About the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study
Since 2000, the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study has been conducted at the University Hospital Essen with randomly selected men and women from the cities of Bochum, Essen and Mülheim a. d. Ruhr. The long-term study is one of the largest scientific studies of cardiovascular disease. Through it, it is possible for the first time to investigate the usefulness of novel examination methods for the risk of myocardial infarction in the population of the Ruhr area. Recall stands for Risk Factors, Evaluation of Coronary Calcification and Lifestyle.
Source: University of Duisburg-Essen
