Cigarette after Valentine snuggle deadlier for some

“It’s this efficient removal of HDL caused by the CETP gene defect that puts people at higher risk of an early onset of heart disease,” said Moss. “The problem only gets worse for smokers who have this form of CETP, because smoking is known to also lower HDL levels. The cumulative effect is a dramatic drop in the age such smokers are likely to experience a heart attack – about a dozen years earlier than someone who also has the variant but does not smoke.”

Moss added that the research also helps explain why some heavy smokers appear to beat the odds when it comes to heart disease.

“If you’re a smoker and you don’t carry the CETP variation, you have the same risk for heart disease as a non-smoker carrying the same gene,” he said. “These smokers can thank their lucky genes for not suffering heart attacks at a young age.”

Moss’ conclusions are based on patients enrolled in the THROMBO Study, a multi-center trial that collected blood samples and medical histories from patients who had suffered their first heart attack in the 1990s. Researchers were able to retrieve frozen blood samples from 814 study participants to determine if they had the CETP gene deviation. Other interesting findings concerning smokers include:

• How much you smoke impacts your risk: Researchers found that heavy smokers – those who smoke more than one pack a day – are likely to suffer heart attacks about 12 years earlier than nonsmokers; for those who smoke less than one pack a day, the age difference is only six years.

• Smokers can recover lost ground within one year of quitting. Those who had smoked more than one pack a day gained about four years within one year of quitting, while those who had smoked less than one pack a day gained about six years.

Moss believes his work touches on a theme that is becoming more prevalent in all fields of medicine.

“When we were younger, we learned how genes gave us a certain hair or eye color. But we are increasingly finding that our ability to untangle a person’s genes can help us understand why some get certain diseases and some don’t. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a similar gene variation that predisposes some smokers to other diseases, such as lung cancer,” he added.

The study was published recently in the Annals of Noninvasive Electrocardiology. Other authors include Ilan Goldenberg, M.D., Daniel Ryan, M.D., Scott McNitt, Shirley W. Eberly, and Wojciech Zareba, M.D., Ph.D.