Science Daily reports on Swedish scientists who’ve found we can inherit “memories” of a heart attack:
In the current [Uppsala University] study, the researchers examined epigenetic changes in people who have had a previous heart attack.
‘During a heart attack the body signals by activating certain genes. This mechanism protects the tissue during the acute phase of the disease, and restores the body after the heart attack. It is therefore likely that it also occurs epigenetic changes associated a heart attack’, says Åsa Johansson, a researcher at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology, who led the study.
The results of the study showed that there are many epigenetic changes in individuals who had experienced a heart attack. Several of these changes are in genes that are linked to cardiovascular disease. However it was not possible to determine whether these differences had contributed to the development of the disease, or if they live on as a memory of gene activation associated with the heart attack.