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TUESDAY, March 7 (HealthDay News) -- Genes may determine whether or not caffeine raises a coffee lover's risk for heart attack, a new study finds.
"It's not just the amount of coffee or soda you drink each day, but how your body manages caffeine," said Dr. Kirk N. Garratt, an interventional cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
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Garratt was not involved in the study, which was conducted by a Canadian team at the University of Toronto. The researchers published their findings in the March 8 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
They looked at a gene for an enzyme called CYP1A2, responsible for the metabolism of caffeine in the liver. One form of the enzyme, produced by the gene variant 1A, metabolizes caffeine rapidly while another form, 1F, metabolizes it slowly.
The researchers performed gene tests on more than 4,000 residents of Costa Rica. Half had suffered nonfatal heart attacks while the other half had no history of heart problems.
It turned out that the two forms of the gene were present almost equally in each group -- 55 percent of those who had had a heart attack and 54 percent of the problem-free group carried the slow-metabolism version.
Scientists have known for some time that the CYP1A2 gene exists in two forms, said Ahmed El-Sohemy, who holds a research chair in nutrigenomics at the University of Toronto and led the study. The belief was that the slow-metabolizing form could affect the heart because it makes caffeine linger in the body. "That is exactly what we found," he said. "The effects were quite striking."
Differences emerged when the researchers used a food questionnaire to track caffeine intake. Carriers of the slow-metabolism form of the gene who drank 2 to 3 cups of coffee a day had a 36 percent higher risk of heart attack than those with the faster form of the gene. For those who drank four or more cups a day, the risk was 64 percent greater.
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