Epigenetics for equitable cardiovascular risk prediction

Almost 1 in 3 deaths in New Zealand are caused by cardiovascular disease (CVD) and around 170,000 New Zealanders are living with the disease.

If we can predict a patient’s risk of future heart disease events, and their response to therapy, it will help to ensure they receive the appropriate treatment.

This project aimed to identify novel epigenetic markers as ‘precision medicine’ tools to improve the prediction of future CVD events in Aotearoa New Zealand’s ethnically diverse population of patients with coronary heart disease.

Epigenetics is a new and growing area of study in disease prediction that looks at changes in our DNA that occur due to environmental factors, such as smoking, nutrition, exercise and stress.

Throughout our lives, our interaction with the environment leaves imprints on our DNA, without changing the underlying genetic code. These reversible changes can be read by our bodies and they reflect each person’s unique past environmental history.

One type of epigenetic alteration, DNA methylation (DNAm), is becoming widely recognised as a sensitive and specific marker of environmental exposures. Certain highly-specific DNAm patterns have been associated with cardiovascular disease.

The research team analysed the DNAm profiles of people with a history of coronary heart disease and combined this data with established risk factors and genetic markers to identify a large number of potential CVD risk markers, some of which were selected for clinical translation assessment.