(Press-News.org) ROCHESTER, Minn - A Mayo Clinic study has identified a familial association in spontaneous coronary artery dissection, a type of heart attack that most commonly affects younger women, suggesting a genetic predisposition to the condition, researchers say. The results are published in the March 23 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.
Researchers used the Mayo Clinic SCAD Registry of 412 enrollees to identify five familial cases of SCAD, comprised of three pairs of first-degree relatives (mother-daughter, identical twin sisters, sisters) and two pairs of second-degree relatives (aunt and niece, and first cousins). Researchers believe this is the first study to identify SCAD as an inherited disorder.
Most heart attacks happen when plaque builds up in arteries over a lifetime, and causes a blockage and a heart attack. In SCAD, a tear occurs inside an artery, and that can cause a blockage, leading to a heart attack.
"I was taught that SCAD was rare and the causes entirely unknown, but through our partnership with SCAD survivors and their families, clues are emerging that may change that," says Sharonne Hayes, M.D., senior author and cardiologist at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. "We know from previous research that SCAD occurs most often in younger women with no or minimal cardiovascular risk factors, like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Recognizing now that it is a heritable disorder has implications for at-risk family members, and helps us understand the condition better."
In one example from the study, a 36-year-old woman had intermittent chest pain for 24 hours. She was diagnosed with a heart attack, and a coronary angiography (a procedure that uses X-ray imaging to see the heart's blood vessels) showed a spontaneous coronary dissection. Her only cardiovascular risk factor was high blood pressure. She had been training for a triathlon the week before her SCAD. Two years later, the woman's 44-year-old maternal cousin went to the hospital following two hours of chest pain radiating to her upper back. She also was diagnosed with SCAD. Her only cardiovascular risk factor was a history of smoking. She participated in a 75-mile bicycle ride three days before her heart attack.
In addition, subsequent testing in both women revealed fibromuscular dysplasia, a vascular condition which more recently has been associated with SCAD, Dr. Hayes says.
Dr. Hayes says it is not clear what causes SCAD in most cases, but researchers know this from previous studies:
SCAD affects women more often than men; up to 80 percent of patients with SCAD are women.
The average age is 42 years.
SCAD patients are typically otherwise healthy, with few heart disease risk factors.
About 20 percent of women SCAD patients have recently given birth.
INFORMATION:
The Mayo Clinic SCAD Registry was created in 2010 in response to an organized effort by an online community of SCAD patients who sought more research on their condition. The registry now includes hundreds of patients who have learned about the registry through the Internet, social media or referrals by their physicians. In addition, hundreds of registry participants and their family members have contributed specimens to an ongoing Mayo Clinic SCAD DNA biorepository.
To learn more about being a participant in the SCAD Research Program at Mayo Clinic, email MayoSCAD@mayo.edu.
Other study authors are Kashish Goel, M.B.B.S., Marysia Tweet, M.D., Timothy Olson, M.D., Joseph Maleszewski, M.D., and Rajiv Gulati, M.D., Ph.D.
About Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to medical research and education, and providing expert, whole-person care to everyone who needs healing. For more information, visit http://mayocl.in/1ohJTMS, or http://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/.
MEDIA CONTACT
Traci Klein, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 507-284-5005, newsbureau@mayo.edu
AURORA, Colo. (March 23, 2015) - Discontinuing statin use in patients with late-stage cancer and other terminal illnesses may help improve patients' quality of life without causing other adverse health effects, according to a new study by led by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and Duke University and funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR).
The finding, to be published in JAMA Internal Medicine on March 23, indicates that care for patients with advanced illness can be improved by discontinuing some therapies that are ...
DETROIT - Innovative angles of attack in research that focus on how the human brain protects and repairs itself will help develop treatments for one of the most common, costly, deadly and scientifically frustrating medical conditions worldwide: traumatic brain injury.
In an extensive opinion piece recently published online on Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs, Henry Ford Hospital researcher Ye Xiong, M.D., Ph.D., makes the case for pioneering work underway in Detroit and elsewhere seeking to understand and repair brain function at the molecular level.
"To date, ...
A blood thinning agent is helping researchers at the University of East Anglia understand more about the body's natural barriers to HIV.
New research published today reveals how the protein langerin, which is present in genital mucous and acts as a natural HIV barrier during the first stages of contamination, interacts with the drug heparin.
The research team has been able to identify two different mechanisms for that interaction - involving different sites or 'faces' at the surface of the langerin protein.
Lead researcher Dr Jesus Angulo from UEA's school of Pharmacy ...
Lexington, MA (March 23, 2015) - Research results published in the Journal of Neurotrauma and conducted by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) as part of a collaboration with Concert Pharmaceuticals, Inc. showed that a novel deuterium-containing sigma-1 agonist invented at Concert, called C-10068, demonstrated anti-seizure and anti-inflammatory effects in a preclinical model of traumatic brain injury (TBI). C-10068, a novel metabolically-stabilized morphinan derivative, is based on a compound first identified at WRAIR in the 1990s as possessing anticonvulsant ...
Many smartphone users know that free apps sometimes share private information with third parties, but few, if any, are aware of how frequently this occurs. An experiment at Carnegie Mellon University shows that when people learn exactly how many times these apps share that information they rapidly act to limit further sharing.
In one phase of a study that evaluated the benefits of app permission managers - software that gives people control over what sensitive information their apps can access - 23 smartphone users received a daily message, or "privacy nudge," telling ...
March 23, 2015 - Patients with carpal tunnel syndrome are more than twice as likely to have migraine headaches, reports a study in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery--Global Open®, the official open-access medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).
The association also runs in the other direction, with migraine patients having higher odds of carpal tunnel syndrome, according to research by Dr. Huay-Zong Law and colleagues of University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. The findings add a new piece of evidence in the ongoing debate ...
This news release is available in French. Raising the age of eligibility for the Old Age Security pension and the Guaranteed Income Supplement will increase inequalities between older people. "This change will force retired people into greater dependence on their private savings to support them as they get older. Research shows that greater privatisation of the retirement income system results in growing inequalities among the older population. When you raise the pension eligibility age, you are also opening the door to rising disparities" according to demographer Yves ...
Implementing a well-established business approach allowed physicians to shave hours off pediatric patient discharges without affecting readmission rates, according to researchers at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.
This approach could help hospitals around the country open up existing beds to more patients, and reduce emergency department crowding and lost referrals without investing significant capital.
Most hospitals have a fixed number of staffed beds available for patients. When hospitals are at or exceed capacity, admitted patients may be kept in the ED ...
An extensive study of global habitat fragmentation - the division of habitats into smaller and more isolated patches - points to major trouble for a number of the world's ecosystems and the plants and animals living in them.
The study shows that 70 percent of existing forest lands are within a half-mile of the forest edge, where encroaching urban, suburban or agricultural influences can cause any number of harmful effects - like the losses of plants and animals.
The study also tracks seven major experiments on five continents that examine habitat fragmentation ...
NAIROBI, KENYA (20 March 2015)--African cattle infected with a lethal parasite that kills one million cows per year are less likely to die when co-infected with the parasite's milder cousin, according to a new study published today in Science Advances. The findings suggest that "fighting fire with fire" is a strategy that might work against a range of parasitic diseases.
The immediate implications are for the battle in Africa against a tick-borne cattle-killing parasite, Theileria parva, which causes East Coast fever. The disease kills one cow every 30 seconds and claims ...