Check Your Blood Group! You Could Be At Risk Of A Heart Disease

Coronary heart disease (CAD) is a disorder that happens when your heart's blood supply is blocked or interrupted by a build-up of fatty substances in the coronary arteries. Over time, the walls of your arteries can become furred up with fatty deposits. This process is known as atherosclerosis and the fatty deposits are called atheroma. CAD is the number 1 cause of death globally: more people die annually from CADs than from any other cause. An estimated 17.7 million people died from heart diseases in 2015, representing 31% of all global deaths. Of these deaths, an estimated 7.4 million were due to coronary heart disease and 6.7 million were due to stroke. Over three quarters of cardiovascular disease related deaths take place in low- and middle-income countries. It affects 52% of the population and has become the leading cause of mortality in India.

Lately, several reasons have been attributed to the paradigm shift in the people suffering from heart attacks to younger age brackets. A heart attack can be induced by poor diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, high blood pressure, sedentary lifestyle, and various other risk factors including genetic ones.

A study conducted earlier this year, by the University Medical Centre Groningen, Netherlands claims that a person's blood group might govern the risk of heart disease.

Lead author of study Tessa Kole, a Master's degree student at the University, said: "It has been suggested that people with non-O blood groups (A, B, AB) are at higher risk of heart attacks and overall cardiovascular mortality, but this suggestion comes from case-control studies which have a low level of evidence. If this was confirmed it could have important implications for personalized medicine

The study, presented at European Society of Cardiology, involved 1.3 million respondents and said that all people with 'non-O blood groups' are at nine percent higher risk of cardiovascular events (and heart attacks in particular), and may also have a shorter life expectancy.

Our blood type is based on the specific mix of antibodies and antigens present in the blood cells, and is determined before you're born, based on the blood types of your parents. O blood types are the most common, with around 37 % people in the India being O+ or O-. So that means more than half the population has a non-O blood type: either A, B, or a combination of both.

The research identified 7,71,113 individuals with a non-O blood group and 519,743 individuals with an O blood group in the meta-analysis of coronary disorders. Among all people with non-O blood groups, 1.5% experienced a coronary event, as compared with 1.4% with the O blood group. Similarly, for combined cardiovascular events, the risk associated with non-O groups was significantly higher.

The higher risk for cardiovascular events in non-O blood group carriers may be due to having greater concentrations of Von willebrand factor, a blood clotting protein which has been associated with thrombotic events. Further, non-O blood group carriers, specifically those with an A blood group, are known to have higher cholesterol levels and galectin-3, which is linked to inflammation and might also lead to heart failure patients, is also higher in those with a non-O blood group.

However, Kole says that further research is required to determine the possible explanations for the causes of increased cardiovascular risk among individuals with a non-O blood type. The researchers say that their findings may have important implications for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular events.

She concluded: "In future, blood group should be considered in risk assessment for cardiovascular prevention, together with cholesterol, age, sex and systolic blood pressure. It could be that people with an A blood group should have a lower treatment threshold for dyslipidaemia or hypertension, for example. We need further studies to validate if the excess cardiovascular risk in non-O blood group carriers may be amenable to treatment."

(With inputs from ANI)

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