A world-leading study is starting in Aotearoa, investigating why large numbers of Fijian people are developing heart disease at young ages, with heart attacks killing some still in their 20s.
Fijians make up just 2% of New Zealand’s population, but 20% of people suffering heart attacks or angina here are under the age of 40.
Many of them are otherwise fit and healthy until the heart disease strikes.
University of Otago scientists believe there is a genetic link, and are recruiting people with premature heart disease, or a family history of the disease, who are under 55 and living in New Zealand.
They hope to analyse blood tests and DNA for the next two years.
Fijian Dr Pritika Narayan is leading the work.
“Two of my first cousins became young widows where their husbands died of cardiac arrest at home,” she told 1News.
There are similar stories in her cultural community in Wellington.
Nathan Singh told 1News his father “first started noticing some shortness of breath” in around 1987.
“He went and got it checked. He had what they diagnosed as angina.”
Singh said his father spent 10 years on the waiting list for a quadruple heart bypass – the “worst of the lot”.
“The day before he actually had his surgery, the surgeon came in and said, ‘your arteries are 99% blocked … you are very lucky to be alive’. But two of his brothers had heart attacks. His dad also had a heart attack.”
Community advisory chairwoman Sandy Bhawan said whether heart disease is fatal or not, it is “totally devastating”.
“I’ve had a close member of the family where it’s been fatal.”
Dr Narayan suspects a trait which helped their ancestors survive famines and infectious diseases is harmful now food is abundant.
“A trait that actually enabled our ancestors to store fat in atypical regions so that they could draw on that resource when they’re starving – now that same trait is causing fat accumulation in the arteries that’s actually maladaptive, that’s causing these very premature heart attacks.”
The study officially began in Newtown on Sunday.
