Two New Studies Have Identified Mutations That Could Have a Big Impact on Cardiovascular Disease
21st June 2014
When cholesterol accumulates inside blood vessels, they sometimes burst into clots that block the flow of blood to a person’s brain. This is what we call a stroke. But even though doctors have understood what goes on during these events for quite some time, researchers still don’t fully grasp what causes heart attacks and strokes to happen in the first place. Now, two new studies, published independently yesterday in The New England Journal of Medicine, may yield some clues, as researchers have found that patients who posses a broken version of a gene that normally transforms fat particles into triglycerides are 40% less likely to experience a stroke, or a heart attack.