A recent paper published in the The New England Journal of Medicine reports that shorter stature actually increases the risk of heart disease by a significant amount. For every extra 2.5 inches in height, the risk for heart disease decreases 13.5%. The idea of the linkage between heart disease and height has been around since 1951 via Dr. Paul Dudley White., but few experts have ever taken the correlation seriously. Many had believed that height was just the marker for some other underlying problem that was really a precursor to heart disease. But this study examined the genetic makeup of over 200,000 people in order to look for the link between any of the 180 genetic variants for height and heart disease. The only solid link the researchers found was that these variants were linked to slightly higher levels of LDL (bad cholesterol). They propose that the rest of the linkage must lie in poorly understood mechanisms that could affect blood vessel and bone development. Many believe that the only way to find out more about these linkages is to let nature take its course and see which genetic variants for height help or hinder chances of heart disease.
I found this very interesting not only because they found this link, but because i would ha expected it to be the opposite. I feel like its a common misconception that tall people would have heart problems, mainly because there is more of them to pump blood through and thus more to go wrong. I think the expansion of the human genome project greatly increased these researchers ability to find this linkage, and i think its exciting to think of all the possible discoveries to come in the near future.
Primary article - NYTimes
Secondary article - ScienceDaily
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