Molecular genetics of congestive heart failure
Abstract
The manifestation of congestive heart failure occurs secondary to a great variety of cardiac or systemic disorders that share a temporal or permanent loss of cardiac function. In order to enhance our knowledge about the genetics of heart failure it is mandatory to analyse the aetiologic factors of these underlying disorders separately. Monogenic forms of congestive heart failure have initially been described by observant physicians in consecutive generations of affected families. Molecular genetic analyses of these families subsequently allowed us to localise and identify some of the genes that cause hypertrophic, dilative, or restrictive cardiomyopathies, congenital heart disease, as well as a number of inborn errors of metabolism. However, the great majority of patients develops heart failure as a final consequence of multifactorial conditions such as hypertension, cardiac hypertrophy, or coronary artery disease. Each of these conditions may be the product of a complex equation that includes environmental and genetic factors. Indeed, some of these factors may be harmful, others protective and for most it takes decades before a phenotype will be clinically detectable. Given this complex scenario it was not unexpected that earl...Continue Reading
References
XbaI polymorphism in DNA at the apolipoprotein B locus is associated with myocardial infarction (MI)
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