Eat Your Greens, Change Your Genes

HAMILTON, OntarioYou might not be stuck with the genes your parents gave you. New research from McMaster and McGill universities found that consumption of fruit and raw vegetables modified a gene called 9p21, the strongest marker for heart disease.

The study involved more than 27,000 subjects from five ethnicitiesEuropean, South Asian, Chinese, Latin American and Araband the affect that their diets had on the effect of the 9p21 gene. The results suggest that individuals with the high-risk genotype who consumed a prudent diet, composed mainly of raw vegetables, fruits and berries, had a similar risk of heart attack to those with the low-risk genotype.

"We know that 9p21 genetic variants increase the risk of heart disease for those that carry it," said Jamie Engert, joint principal investigator of the study and researcher in cardiovascular diseases at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and associate member in the Department of Human Genetics at McGill University. "But it was a surprise to find that a healthy diet could significantly weaken its effect."

"Our research suggests there may be an important interplay between genes and diet in cardiovascular disease," said the study's lead author Ron Do, who conducted this research as part of his PhD at McGill and is now based at the Center for Human Genetics Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "Future research is necessary to understand the mechanism of this interaction, which will shed light on the underlying metabolic processes that the 9p21 gene is involved in."

The results of the study are published in the current issue of PLoS Medicine.