How Tall or Short You are is Directly Linked to the Risk of Coronary Heart Disease

How tall are you? It may have an impact on your heart health. Scientists have used a genetic approach to discover a link between height and coronary heart disease.

"For more than 60 years it has been known that there is an inverse relationship between height and risk of coronary heart disease," said Nilesh Samani, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It is not clear whether this relationship is due to confounding factors such as poor socioeconomic environment, or nutrition, during childhood that on the one hand determine achieved height and on the other risk of coronary heart disease, or whether it represents a primary relationship between shorter height and more coronary heart disease."

Coronary heart disease is the most common cause of premature death worldwide. This condition causes the arteries that supply blood to the heart to become narrow due to a deposition of fatty material, called plaque, in the walls of the arteries. If a blood clot forms over the plaque then the artery can become completely blocked.

"By using the power of very large scale genetic studies, this research is the first to show that the known association between increased height and a lower risk of coronary heart disease is at least in part due to genetics, rather than purely down to nutrition or lifestyle factors," said Jeremy Pearson, one of the researchers. "The team has identified several ways that naturally occurring gene variations can control both a person's height and their risk of coronary heart disease. Further exploration of these genes may suggest new ways to reduce the risk of heart and circulatory disease."

The findings reveal a bit more about how genetic factors linked with height can increase a person's risk. In fact, for every 2.5 inches change in your height, your risk of heart disease is impacted by 13.5 percent.

The findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN).