TUESDAY, Sept. 3, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- A certain form of a particular enzyme may make some alcoholics more likely to develop a form of heart failure called cardiomyopathy.
That's the conclusion of a study in today's issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Alcoholics with that genetic trait are more likely than other alcoholics to develop heart failure, even when they drink the same amount of alcohol over a lifetime.
Researchers from Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and the University of Barcelona studied 30 Spanish male alcoholics with congestive heart failure. Using a questionnaire, the researchers found out how much alcohol the men drank and gathered information about their lifestyle and background.
These men were compared to 27 alcoholic men who drank the same amount but had normal hearts.
The researchers found the two groups had a difference in the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) gene, which plays a role in hypertension and other cardiovascular conditions. A particular form of the gene is believed to be a factor in heart problems.
Some copies of the ACE gene may contain an extra piece of inserted (I) DNA sequence, while others have a deleted (D) portion of DNA. Genes come in pairs, and each part of the pair is called an allele. The allele with deleted DNA has been linked with cardiomyopathy, the researchers say.
The researchers found that nearly 60 percent of the alcoholics with heart failure had two copies of the D allele, while only 10 percent of them had two copies of the I allele.
"We showed that the alcoholics who have two copies of the D allele have a 16 times greater risk of developing cardiomyopathy compared to the same individuals who drank just as much but had one copy of the I gene," says study co-author Dr. Emanuel Rubin, a professor and chair of pathology at Jefferson Medical College.
More information
The American Heart Association has more on drinking and heart disease.
