Question: does DNA information help to find strokes or heart attacks

Amy Mason answered on 10 Feb 2022:

Oh yes! We can find points in our DNA, where if you have a particular variant you are more likely to have a heart attack, and if you have another version you are less likely. We can’t change our genes to stop this, but we can use our genes to predict who is more likely to have heart problems (or strokes) later in life.

However, it’s not as strong an effect as “environmental factors”. These are all the things other than genetics that affects our health. Some of these we can individually control: how much we drink, if we smoke, if we exercise, what sort of food we eat. Some of these we can’t: how rich our parents are, if we catch certain illnesses, how much pollution there is near our house.

We can do something even more clever with DNA! We can look at some of the other factors that are genetically controlled to some degree (like blood pressure) and then compare that genetic impact on heart attacks to get an estimate of how much blood pressure impacts our chance of heart disease. This allows us to build up a better picture of the causes of heart disease we can change. Then we can use that information to decide if it is worth taking medication to change our blood pressure.