Having Sibling With Heart Disease Boosts Your Risk

Research has shown that having a parent with heart disease increases your risk of having heart disease.

Now a new study shows that having a sibling with heart disease could put you at even greater risk than having a parent with the disease.

Carolyn Snow, 72, was surprised when she suffered a heart attack last summer.

"I was lucky," she said.

Neither her parents nor her grandparents ever had heart disease. What Snow never considered were her sister's heart valve problems, reported WCVB-TV in Boston.

"I thought it would be altogether different, hers and my case," Snow said.

But a new study finds otherwise. Researchers with the Framingham Heart Study in Massachusetts tracked about 2,500 people who didn't have heart disease but had siblings who did.

The team tracked the volunteers for eight years, looking for the occurrence of a cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack, stroke or blockage in a leg artery.

"Having a sibling with cardiovascular disease increases your risk for a heart attack by as much as 45 percent compared to people without a sibling with cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Joanne Murabito.

The findings are published in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We were surprised that sibling cardiovascular heart disease may actually be a stronger risk factor than parental cardiovascular disease," Murabito said.

Murabito said it may be that shared childhood eating and exercise habits, along with genetics, could explain the sibling risk. She said adult siblings need to tell each other, and their doctors, about anything to do with their heart health.

"Speak to your siblings to ask them and have them share with you their medical history, including history of any type of cardiovascular disease events, such as heart attack, stroke or blockage or clogging of the arteries in the legs," Murabito said.

For David Maffe, 45, heart health has always been a family affair. His father and grandfather both had heart disease, and now he is being treated for angina and a narrowed artery.

"My four brothers and sisters are the ones who ought to be worried because I'm the one with the heart disease. So you know, maybe I'll mention that to them tonight," Maffe said.

And if you do have a sibling or parent with heart disease, there are ways to reduce your own risk, such as controlling blood pressure and weight, increasing physical activity and not smoking.