Genetic score improves heart disease prediction in Chinese adults
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Researchers at Fuwai Hospital and Peking University, working with collaborators at the University of Oxford, created a new genetic risk score to better predict heart disease in people of Chinese descent.
Existing tools for estimating inherited risk of coronary artery disease largely rely on data from European populations, which limits their accuracy in other groups. The team built a “trans-ancestry” score by combining genetic information from both East Asian and European studies.
This new score, called PRS-CSx, estimates risk by analyzing hundreds of thousands of common genetic variations. The researchers tested two versions of this score, one built solely from existing genetic data and another refined using data from 2,800 Chinese individuals with heart disease and over 2,000 without. They then validated the scores on a large group of over 72,000 participants in the China Kadoorie Biobank, tracking them for an average of 12 years to see who developed heart disease.
The results showed the trans-ancestry scores were significantly more accurate than scores based on only European or East Asian data. Participants in the highest-risk group, according to the new scores, were roughly twice as likely to develop heart disease as those in the lowest-risk group. Importantly, the version of the score that didn’t require Chinese-specific training data performed just as well, suggesting it could be applied to other underrepresented populations lacking extensive genetic datasets.
The researchers envision this score complementing traditional heart disease risk assessments, helping doctors identify individuals who could benefit from early prevention strategies.
