An important scientific achievement for the Faculty of Medicine of the Technion
Avi Blizovsky
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/cardiodiabetic.html
The Technion researchers were able to identify a gene that determines which diabetics are at high risk of developing heart disease. The identification is done through a simple blood test which only needs to be done once in a lifetime. This is what the scientific newspaper The Journal of the American College of Cardiology reveals in its latest issue.
Dr. Andrew Levy from the Faculty of Medicine of the Technion in Haifa, who headed the team of researchers, explained that heart disease is the most common and serious risk for diabetics. More than 70% of them are in the shadow of this risk. "There are geographic and ethnic differences in the risk of heart disease in diabetics that cannot be fully explained by differences in conventional heart disease risk factors," said Dr. Levy. He added that there are two forms of the predictive gene, and they are present more or less equally in the general population and in diabetics. The patients who carry one type of the gene are five times more likely to develop heart disease than the patients who carry the other type of the gene. "If we can accurately determine which diabetics are at a higher risk of developing heart disease, with the help of the genetic test, we will be able to save many lives thanks to advanced intervention techniques," emphasized Dr. Levy.
The sample group included 206 people with heart disease and a control group of 206 people aged 45-74. The researchers, who used stored blood samples, tested the haptoglobin, a blood protein found in three different forms: 2-2; 1-1; 1-2. It turned out that people with the 2-2 form are 5 times more prone to heart disease than people with the 1-1 form. For medium risk, those with form 1-2 are exposed.
"This is an innovative idea that will undoubtedly attract the attention of many clinical researchers and scientists around the world," said Dr. Myron Weisfeld, from the John Hopkins Medical Institute in the USA. Whereas Dr. Eugene Braunwald from the Harvard University School of Medicine in the USA added that the ability to identify diabetic patients who may develop heart disease achieved by the Technion researchers led by Dr. Levy will allow early preventive measures to be taken and save the lives of many patients.
For a message in English on the Technion Friends website in the USA
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