For some, eating a doughnut every morning is a recipe for heart
attack. For others, the doughnut doesn’t seem to matter—it’s
almost as if certain individuals can’t get heart disease even if
they try. The flip side is that people who are predisposed to
heart disease can make lifestyle changes, in this example by
cutting down on saturated fats and cholesterol, to decrease
their odds of actually experiencing a heart attack. This is
because heart disease is caused by a combination of genetic and
lifestyle factors like diet and exercise. As a new paper
published last month in PLoS Medicine illustrates, lifestyle
choices can have an even greater impact on heart disease risk
depending on a person’s genetics. The study’s findings suggest
that diet influences the association between SNPs in the 9p21
region of the genome—such as rs10757278*—and risk for heart
attack and cardiovascular disease. The 9p21 region is one of the
most established genetic associations for heart disease, but
until now its interactions with envi