Not Only Lipids and Inflammation: Insight Into a New Cause of Heart Attack and Other Vascul...( REYKJAVIK Iceland Jan. 6 /- deCOD...),Health

REYKJAVIK, Iceland, Jan. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- deCODE scientists today report that the genetic variant on chromosome 9p21 that the company has linked to increased risk of heart attack is also associated with up to 70% increase in risk of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and intracranial aneurysm (IA). This is the first common genetic variant ever found to associate with either condition. The paper, entitled 'The same sequence variant on 9p21 associates with myocardial infarction, abdominal aortic aneurysm and intracranial aneurysm,' is published today in the online edition of Nature Genetics, at http://www.nature.com/ng.

AAA and IA are the most common aneurysms - balloon-like protrusions on arteries in the abdomen and head, respectively - and are potentially lethal if they are left untreated and burst. "Today's findings enhance the importance of our 9p21 variant when it comes to risk of cardiovascular disease, and suggest that it confers this risk by affecting how artery walls respond to other risk factors such as atherosclerotic plaque and inflammation," said Kari Stefansson, CEO of deCODE. "As we bring these findings into our cardiovascular therapeutics program, we are also incorporating them into our deCODE MI diagnostic test and our deCODEme(TM) personal genome analysis service. With today's discovery and others we expect to announce in the weeks and months ahead, we underscore our global leadership in human genetics and our commitment to convert this leadership into products and the products into profit for our shareholders."

Six months ago, deCODE reported that this SNP confers significantly increased risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) and accounts for roughly one- third of early-onset heart attacks. This discovery has now been replicated in studies of ten populations. The study published today was aimed in part at investigating how this risk is conferred. To do so, the deCODE team, - enli
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