Study suggests stress gene can cause problems

USA Today

Inheriting one form of a gene makes people under stress more vulnerable to heart attack and stroke, suggests a new study.

Adults with the harmful version of this gene react to mental stress with much higher jumps in heart rate and blood pressure than those who have a different form of the gene, says Redford Williams, a cardiologist at Duke University Medical Center.

This "hyper-reactivity" could damage the cardiovascular systems of people with stressful lives, Williams says, and may explain why stress shatters the health of some but affects others much less.

The gene regulates movement of serotonin, a "feel-good" chemical in the brain. In Williams' study, researchers tested blood pressure and heart rates of 54 adults at rest.

Stress-inducing lab exercises prompted significantly higher blood pressure and heart rate increases in those with the "long" version of the gene, Williams reports in Psychosomatic Medicine.

More than 70 percent of Africans and African Americans have the "long" version of the gene, compared with about 55 percent of those with European ancestry and less than 30 percent of those with Japanese and Chinese ancestry.