Understanding Enlargement Of The Heart

Abstract

As many as one in ten healthy individuals have hearts that are bigger than normal. Careful scientific investigation has revealed that the bigger one's heart, the greater the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease. This is true even in the absence of known causes of heart disease. Unlike high blood pressure or cholesterol, the size of the heart is not easily measured and enlargement often goes undetected. We were among the first internationally to discover genetic clues to enlarged hearts. We identified a region on a rat chromosome that influences heart size and we have now discovered abnormalities in a key gene in this region. These changes alter the function of a cellular protein that me..