Oct. 11, 2011 -- We know that eating a very healthy diet appears
to make heart disease less likely, but now that even goes for
people whose genes put them at a higher than normal risk of
heart trouble. "A diet high in fruits and vegetables appears to
mitigate the genetic risk of a heart attack," says researcher
Sonia S. Anand, MD, PhD, professor of medicine and epidemiology
at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The
finding, if it bears out, could affect many people at risk for
heart disease because of a genetic variant that researchers have
only recently linked with heart attack. It could also call into
question the suggestion that you can't help your genes. In
general, about 50% of people carry one copy of the bad gene and
20% carry two copies, Anand tells WebMD. Anand and colleagues
evaluated how diet could affect variants in the chromosome 9p21
region. In 2007, scientists from several countries found
variants in this 9p21 area highly linked with heart disease and
heart attack. Since the init