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Cardiologists have struggled in recent years to score major advances against heart disease and stroke. Although death rates have been dropping steadily since the 1960s, progress combating the twin diseases has plateaued by other measures.
Genetics has had a profound impact on cancer treatment in recent years. Now, heart-disease specialists hope genetics will reveal fresh insight into the interaction between a person's biology, living habits and medications that can better predict who is at risk of a heart attack or stroke.
Heart disease is linked to about 800,000 deaths a year in the U.S. In 2010, some 200,000 of those deaths could have been avoided, including more than 112,300 deaths among people younger than 65. Now, widespread prevalence of obesity and diabetes threatens to undermine such gains. And a large gap remains between how white patients and minorities—especially African-Americans—benefit from effective strategies.
Via Seth Bilazarian, MD
There's great hope that personalized genetic testing can help with both risk assessment and helping to streamline treatment decisions for patients. Being able to tell a patient that based on your genetic profile you have a 60% chance of response to treatment A and a 30% chance of response to treatment B would be a fantastic advance in treatment efficiency and cost. Unfortunately, the closest thing we currently have , to this in current application is genetic testing for the drug Plavix (clopidogrel) and the adoption has been fraught with difficulty. Clinicians and patients wait with eager anticipation of this research.
About 800,000 deaths a year in the U.S. due to heart disease... while better treatments are always welcome, the best -- an least costly -- treatment is prevention = healthy lifestyle!