New research suggests that young people whose parents have a heart attack at a young age -- before age 60 -- may already have developed early artery disease themselves.

In a study of healthy young Italians, who were on average 19 years old, those whose parents had had a premature heart attack had thicker artery walls and poorer artery function than those whose parents had not had a heart attack.

Both measures are signs of early atherosclerosis, the build-up of fatty deposits on the lining of arteries, which eventually can lead to a heart attack, researchers report in the September 21st issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

The findings highlight the need for these children to pay extra attention to sticking to a healthy lifestyle, including exercising, refraining from smoking and eating a low-fat diet, according to one of the study's authors.

The results of the study also suggest, but do not prove, that genetic differences account in part for some cases of heart disease, Dr. M. Gene Bond, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told Reuters Health.

``In this offspring (of people who had premature heart attacks) there are structural changes within arteries and functional changes within arteries that are associated with atherosclerosis,'' Bond said in an interview. It shows that ``in these young people, the disease has begun,'' Bond added.

``If these changes can be found in young people, it gives them decades to monitor traditional risk factors, to be aware that beginning to smoke tobacco or eating a high-fat diet or leading a sedentary lifestyle may increase their susceptibility to atherosclerosis,'' he said.

Bond noted that none of the study's participants had any symptoms of artery disease. This is not unusual, he said, since atherosclerosis takes years or even decades to cause symptoms.

Bond and his colleagues based the findings on 80 healthy young Italians, half of whose parents had had a premature heart attack.

The researchers used ultrasound imaging to measure the thickness of an artery layer called the intima-media. Gradual thickening of this layer is a marker for the progression of atherosclerosis. The investigators also used ultrasound to measure the brachial artery's reactivity -- a measure of how well the artery maintains blood flow. The brachial artery supplies blood to the upper arm.

The North Carolina researcher noted that traditional risk factors such as obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure did not seem to account for the early signs of artery disease in the young people in the study. In fact, the children of people who had had heart attacks and the offspring of healthier parents were similar in terms of such artery disease risk factors.

``This suggests that there is a genetic predisposition'' to develop artery disease, according to Bond. A wide variety of inherited genetic differences may explain, at least in part, why children of premature heart attack patients tend to have less healthy arteries, he explained.

(From China Daily)