Tens of millions of people from the Indian subcontinent
are destined to suffer heart disease due to a single genetic
mutation, according to a study published yesterday.
The wayward gene, found almost exclusively
among the more than 1.5 billion people in or from
South Asia, is almost guaranteed to lead to heart trouble,
usually later in life, the researchers reported. Four
per cent of the region’s population – some 60 million
people – carry the mutation, the study concludes.
Scientists have long suspected that India,
Pakistan, Sri Lanka and probably Bangladesh carry an
outsized share of the global burden of health disease.
The new research showed an unexpectedly common
defect in a gene, MYBPC3, that provides the
blueprint for a certain kind of heart protein.
