14 DAY TRIAL // The study that showed that heart disease in an individual is influenced by parental history was not a big surprise for doctors that have observed this since a long time ago. But the research recently carried out is the first one that scientifically proved the fact that heart disorders are very likely to be "a family affair."
"Heart failure is a type of cardiovascular disease in which the heart is unable to pump blood at the rate which is commensurate with the requirements of the body," Dr. Vasan S. Ramachandran from Boston University School of Medicine, co-author of the study, defined the subject of the study.
The report published in The New England Journal of Medicine investigated 1,497 volunteers in the Framingham Offspring Study and showed that parental heart failure influences almost twice the likelihood of left-ventricular systolic dysfunction in their children.
The same co-author of the research stated for Reuters: "If our findings are confirmed, there would be added justification for adding heart failure to the list of conditions that one can inquire about when obtaining family history of medical disorders from patients."
Also, routine analyses of children whose at least one parent suffer from heart impairment compared to analyses of children with no parental history in these disorders proved that heart disorders really run in the family: the offsprings of parents with heart conditions have a 70% higher risk to suffer from the heart disease than the ones with "clean" parents.
The study also found that children with both the parents suffering from heart impairments are more likely to be affected later in life by cord problems than children with a single suffering parent.
However, the team stated that their study was developed only to suggest or draw attention upon the influence of heart conditions parental history on offsprings, not to ascertain this as a universally acknowledged cause: "Our demonstration of an increased familial risk of heart failure suggests, but does not establish, a causal relation of genetic factors to the disease process."