Heart attacks—especially those hitting younger individuals—run in families, which can leave sons, daughters, and siblings wondering about their future. Slight changes in certain genes are known to put a person at greater risk and yet finding those common variants, or single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), has not been easy. In a study of 26,000 subjects, the largest to date, researchers including Sekar Kathiresan, HMS assistant professor of medicine, and David Altshuler, HMS professor of genetics, both at Massachusetts General Hospital, pinpointed heart attack–related SNPs in nine genetic regions, three of which had never before been associated with heart attacks. The findings were published online Feb. 8 in Nature Genetics.
