Stress Reaction Gene Tied to Heart Attacks

A genetic variant known to make some people hypersensitive to stress is also linked to a 38 percent increased risk of heart attack or death in patients with heart disease, according to researchers at Duke Medicine.

“We’ve heard a lot about personalized medicine in cancer, but in cardiovascular disease we are not nearly as far along in finding the genetic variants that identify people at higher risk,” said senior author Redford B. Williams Jr., M.D., director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke University School of Medicine.The researchers built on previous work at Duke and elsewhere.