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VIDEO: Genetics play large role in risk for early MI
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SANTA ANA PUEBLO, N.M. — In this video, Sekar Kathiresan, MD, focuses on the reasons underlying why some individuals develop MI at a young age and strategies to identify those at risk.
Kathiresan, director of the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, explains the difference between monogenic and polygenic models and the development of risk scores that incorporate millions of variants, which may be used to identify young patients at high risk for MI.
“In a small fraction of people, the risk is monogenic, but in a much larger fraction of people the risk is polygenic,” Kathiresan told Cardiology Today. “We are working hard to make [a] polygenic risk test available to the general population.”
Watch the video for more.