‘Men inherit heart risk from father,pass on it to their sons’

The British study,published in The Lancet,found that men with a particular version of the Y chromosome,were 50 per cent more likely to suffer from coronary artery disease (CAD),which can lead to angina,heart attacks and heart failure.

And those having the variant are also more likely to pass on the danger to their male children,the scientists claimed.

Dr Maciej Tomaszewski,from the University of Leicester who led the study said: “We are very excited about these findings as they put the Y chromosome on the map of genetic susceptibility to coronary artery disease.

“We wish to further analyse the human Y chromosome to find specific genes and variants that drive this association.”Coronary heart disease,which reduces the delivery of oxygenated blood to the heart muscle,affects more men than women and results in thousands deaths worldwide every year.

In the study,the researchers genotyped 11 markers of the male-specific region of the Y chromosome in 3,233 biologically unrelated British men from three cohorts — the British Heart Foundation Family Heart Study (BHF-FHS),West of Scotland

Coronary Prevention Study (WOSCOPS),and Cardiogenics Study.

A DNA analysis showed that 90 per cent of the men carried one of two common versions of the Y chromosomes,called haplogroup I and haplogroup R1b1b2.

It was also found that carriers of haplogroup I had about a 50 per cent higher age-adjusted risk of CAD than did men with other Y chromosome lineages in BHF-FHS,WOSCOPS,and joint analysis of both populations.

The association between haplogroup I and increased risk of CAD was independent of traditional cardiovascular and socioeconomic risk factors,such as age,BMI,blood pressure,lipids,diabetes,smoking,alcohol consumption among others.

Further analysis showed that men with haplogroup I showed downregulation of adaptive immunity as well as upregulation of inflammatory response pathways in their immune system cells compared with carriers of other Y chromosome types.These data show that predisposition to CAD in men might,at least in part,be determined by the paternal lineage of their Y chromosome and that this effect on risk of coronary artery disease is most likely mediated through the immune response,the researchers said.”Our study is the first to evaluate associations between main European Y chromosome lineages and CAD as well as its underlying risk factors… It revealed that the Y chromosome might have a magnified effect on men beyond sex determination despite the small number of genes it harbours in the human genome,” they concluded.Commenting on the findings,Dr Virginia Miller at Mayo Clinic in Rochester said: “Future research should include exploration of potential interconnections among pathways relating immunity to other forms of cardiovascular disease,such as those identified for various cardiomyopathies.”