Healthy Diet May Counteract Heart Disease Gene

TUESDAY, Oct. 11 (HealthDay News) — A healthy diet with lots of
fruits and vegetables can significantly weaken the effect of a gene
associated with an increased risk of heart disease, a new study
suggests.

In the study, published in the current online edition of the journal
PLoS Medicine, researchers examined the link between the 9p21 gene
variant and diet in more than 27,000 people of five ethnicities — Arab,
European, Chinese, Latin American and South Asian.

The findings showed that the risk of heart attack in people with the
9p21 gene variant who ate a healthy diet composed mainly of raw
vegetables, fruits and berries was similar to that of people without the
high-risk gene variant.

The international study was led by researchers at McMaster and McGill
universities in Canada.

“We observed that the effect of a high-risk genotype can be mitigated
by consuming a diet high in fruits and vegetables,” joint principal
investigator Sonia Anand, a researcher at the Population Health Research
Institute and a professor of medicine and epidemiology at McMaster’s
School of Medicine, said in a McMaster University news release. “Our
results support the public health recommendation to consume more than five
servings of fruits or vegetables as a way to promote good health.”

“Our research suggests there may be an important interplay between
genes and diet in cardiovascular disease,” added lead author Ron Do, who
is now at the Center for Human Genetics Research at Massachusetts General
Hospital but conducted the research as part of his doctoral program at
McGill. “Future research is necessary to understand the mechanism of this
interaction, which will shed light on the underlying metabolic processes
that the 9p21 gene is involved in.”

More information

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration outlines how to eat for a healthy heart.

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