Heart attacks are scary. They happen when the flow of blood to the heart gets blocked.
This blockage is usually because of fat, cholesterol, or other substances forming a plaque in the arteries that feed the heart.
When this plaque breaks, a clot forms around it and can block the blood flow. The result? A heart attack.
What is SCAD?
There’s a type of heart attack that mostly affects women who are younger than 60. This is called Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, or SCAD for short.
In SCAD, a bruise or bleed forms in the wall of an artery that sends blood to the heart. This bleed blocks the blood flow and leads to a heart attack.
The strange thing about SCAD is that it often strikes women who are otherwise healthy, and sometimes, it can happen more than once.
SCAD and Pregnancy
One more thing: SCAD is a leading cause of heart attacks around the time of pregnancy. You can imagine how scary this must be – having a heart attack while you’re expecting a baby.
Why Does SCAD Happen?
Here’s the big question: why does SCAD happen? Unfortunately, we don’t really know yet. This means we can’t prevent it from happening.
But recently, a group of researchers from around the world decided to take a closer look.
The Big Investigation
The research team included scientists from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Leicester Biomedical Research Center (BRC) and Universite Paris Cite, with support from others in Canada, the U.S., and Australia.
They performed a study that involved 1,917 cases of SCAD and 9,292 control cases, all of them of European ancestry.
What They Found
The researchers found 16 genes that increased the risk of a SCAD. These genes are involved in several processes, like how the cells and tissues hold together, and how the blood clots when there’s a bleed.
Interestingly, many of the genes linked to a higher risk of SCAD are also linked to a different kind of heart disease called Coronary Artery Disease (CAD).
However, in CAD, these genes work differently. This suggests that SCAD and CAD are quite different. The only risk factor that SCAD and CAD share is high blood pressure.
What This Means
The lead author of the study, Dr. David Adlam, says, “This research confirms that there are multiple genes involved in determining the risk of a person having a SCAD.
These genes give us the first key insight into the underlying causes of this disease and provide new lines of enquiry, which we hope will guide future new treatment approaches.”
So, while we still have a lot to learn about SCAD, this research gives us a better idea of what’s happening in the bodies of women who experience this type of heart attack.
This could help scientists come up with new ways to treat and maybe even prevent SCAD in the future.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that yogurt may help lower the death risks in heart disease, and coconut sugar could help reduce artery stiffness.
For more information about health, please see recent studies that Vitamin D deficiency can increase heart disease risk, and results showing how to heal heart scars after heart attacks.
The study was published in Nature Genetics.
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