"These discoveries will usher in a new age of research, with a great impact on diagnosis, reversal of conditions, prognoses, treatment, even cure," says Stephen Mockrin, a cardiologist and chief of the hypertension and kidney diseases branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) in Bethesda, Md.
For now, though, the number of grants being funded for inherited cardiovascular disease reflects the rarity of these conditions. For example, in fiscal year 1992, out of a total grant budget of $95 million, the Dallas-based American Heart Association is supplying $3.6 million in funding for 118 research projects for noninherited cardiomyopathies (defects in the heart muscle). A separate category, for the familial (inherited) cardiomyopathies, which afflict only about 5 in 10,000 people, funds only 13 projects, for a total of $392,359.
Amid the millions of people with environmentally triggered heart disease are a few with disorders caused by single genes. ...
