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By scouring the DNA of thousands of patients, researchers at the Ó³»­´«Ã½, Massachusetts General Hospital, and their colleagues have discovered four rare gene mutations that not only lower the levels of triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood, but also significantly reduce a person’s risk of coronary heart disease — dropping it by 40 percent. The mutations all cripple the same gene, called APOC3, suggesting a powerful strategy in developing new drugs against heart disease. 

A team led by Ó³»­´«Ã½ researchers has found that triglycerides - the fats that our bodies burn for fuel - play a causal role in coronary artery disease (CAD), the most common form of heart disease and the leading cause of death in the United States. , which leverages new genetic data from a , suggests that lowering triglyceride levels through treatment may help reduce the risk of CAD. The findings appear this week in Nature Genetics.