THE ROLE OF IMMUNITY IN CORONARY ARTERY DISEASE.

The 9th Feb issue of the Lancet online, carries an interesting article on immunity and CAD. Led by Dr Maceij Tomaszewski from University of Leicester, the researches looked into the chromosomal types of patients who were under clinical study for CAD prevention. They examined the y chromosome ( the male chromosome ) of 3,233 individuals under study for other clinical trials, and found that 90% of them had haptogroup 1 or haptogroup R1b1b2 on their Y chromosomes. Amongst those with haptogroup 1, there was a 50% increase incidence of CAD. It is likely that these haptogroup 1 gene acts through the immune sustem, to increase our susceptibility for CAD
This findings is very interesting from 3 points of view.
1. We know that there are haptogroup 1 in the Y chromosomes that may increase our incidence of CAD. Therefore, we can then produced targetted therapy, using genomics.
2. We also know now that deranged immunity may play a role in CAD pathogenesis. We have always suspected this for a long time. This also opens another therapeutic frontier.
3. We can now identify people at risk of CAD and profile them together with the usual CAD risk factors of hypertension, diabetes, cigarette smoking and dyslipidemia.
Of course there is much more work that needs be done, before we can use these facts to our patients benefit.
Dr Maceij and colleagues have begun the first step.