Heart Disease Trigger May be in Your Genes, McGill University, Harvard University, and Johns Hopkins University Study

A type of cholesterol you’ve probably never heard of may be linked to the third leading cause of heart disease in the country. In a study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers from McGill University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and other institutions report discovering an abnormality in the gene responsible for a little-known type of cholesterol called Lp(a). This form of cholesterol appears to cause a condition known as aortic stenosis, which affects 1.5 million Americans.