 Provided by ReachMD
Genetic Clues to Heart Health
on Heart Matters
Produced in Cooperation with American College of Cardiology
We know that genes play a role in cardiovascular health, but new research has identified specific DNA regions that are associated with risk factors for coronary heart disease. It's estimated that 30-50% of cardiovascular health is influenced by family history or genetics, while the rest is influenced by other environmental factors, diet and exercise. How might these new genetic discoveries lead to new treatment options? Dr. Christopher O'Donnell, associate director and scientific director of the SHARe Project of the Framingham Heart Study at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and associate clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, talks about his work genotyping the single-nucleotide polymorphisms of large cohort study participants. How are genome-wide association studies leading to discovery of new genes associated with various diseases, and will these findings move us into a new era of prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease? Dr. Janet Wright hosts.
Dr. Christopher J. O'Donnell received his undergraduate degree from Brown University, his medical degree from Harvard Medical School, and his public health degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed an internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is currently on staff as a practicing cardiologist in the cardiology division, department of medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, and he is a faculty member (associate clinical professor) of Harvard Medical School. In 1996, Dr. O'Donnell joined the Framingham Heart Study as a Medical Officer of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. In 2002, he was appointed associate director of the Framingham Heart Study and co-chair of its genetic steering committee. In 2006, he was named senior advisor to the director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for Genome Research. In this role, he helps steer the direction of the genetic and genomic research portfolio of NHLBI. In 2006, he was named the scientific director of the Framingham SHARE (SNP Health Association Resource) Study, a whole-genome association study now underway in over 9,000 Framingham Heart Study participants. In 2007, he became a tenured investigator of the division of intramural research of NHLBI. His major research focus is on the epidemiology and genetic epidemiology of clinical and subclinical cardiovascular disease, and he directs numerous large-scale imaging studies using cardiac CT scanning, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, and other subclinical atherosclerosis modalities. He has published over 160 peer reviewed articles and chapters, in journals including the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Medical Genetics, Circulation, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. O'Donnell is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association. He serves in a leadership position on the Council for Epidemiology and Prevention of the American Heart Association as well as on numerous Committees and Working Groups of the NHLBI and NIH. In 2000, Dr. O'Donnell was a recipient of the National Institutes of Health Award of Merit for his research achievements at the Framingham Heart Study. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and he also recently served as an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Janet S. Wright is the senior vice president for science and quality at the American College of Cardiology (ACC), a post she has held since May of 2008. She practiced invasive cardiology for 23 years as a partner in Northstate Cardiology Consultants, located in Chico, Calif. Dr. Wright has served on the Board of Trustees of the ACC and most recently chaired the College's Presidential Task Force on Performance Assessment, Recognition, Reinforcement, Reward, and Reporting (PAR4). She is a member of the National Committee for Quality Assurance's Physician Programs Committee and of the National Committee on Evidence-based Benefit Design of the National Business Group on Health. Dr. Wright serves on the board of the Center for Information Therapy, an independent non-profit organization committed to the provision of personalized health information during each healthcare encounter. She is also a fellow of the ACC. Since its inception in December of 2003, Dr. Wright has been a member of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee, the 29-person board charged with administering the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, as outlined by the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. She received her medical doctorate at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine and completed her residency at the Children's Hospital and Adult Medicine Center in San Francisco. She then finished her cardiovascular fellowship at San Francisco General Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco.
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The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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