Via practica 4/2009

Molecular genetics of dyslipidemy

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the most common cause of death in the industrially developed countries. Similarly to the other diseases, also CVD has its significant genetic component. It is estimated, that the proportion of genetic and environmental factors is roughly equal. The last results suggest that the strongest genetic component will be in diabetes mellitus, and the lowest in hypertension. Although there are some rare mutations leading to the CVD development, the majority of cases have polygenous background. It means that plenty of variants/polymorphisms in many genes play an important role in CVD development. Between the genes with effects beyond doubts are genes for apolipoprotein E (cholesterol) and apolipoprotein A5 (triglycerides). Individual genes interact both with each other (gene – gene interaction), and with environmental factors (with nutrition – nutrigenics; with physical activity – actigenics; with treatment – pharmacogenetics). Better understanding of these interactions will enable more accurate CVD risk assessment and thus it is of particular importance to CVD prevention in the future.

Keywords: cholesterol, triglycerides, DNA, polymorphism, environment, interaction