Doctors know that the risks for cardiovascular disease are partly determined in the genes.
And a few genes for severe forms of inherited risk, a familial form of high cholesterol for example, have been pinpointed. Coon and colleagues reported recently in the Annals of Human Genetics that evidence points to a single gene accounting for modestly raised levels of the LDL-C form of cholesterol in some people. And it is not one of the genes already associated with cholesterol. LDL inheritance is not cut and dried, Coon says. We don't expect simple Mendelian inheritance.