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Heart disease

The shorter you are, the higher your heart disease risk

Matt Cantor
Newser staff
Chandra Bahadur Dangi, from Nepal, (L) the shortest adult to have ever been verified by Guinness World Records, poses for pictures with the world's tallest man Sultan Kosen from Turkey, during a photocall in London on November 13, 2014, to mark Guinness World Records Day. Chandra Dangi, measures a tiny 21.5in (0.54m)  the same height as six stacked cans of beans. Sultan Kosen measures 8 ft 3in (2.51m).  AFP PHOTO / ANDREW COWIEANDREW COWIE/AFP/Getty Images ORG XMIT: 2583 ORIG FILE ID: 535311561

(NEWSER) – It's tough enough being on the shorter side, and a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine doesn't make things any easier. Researchers in the UK find that being small of stature increases the risk of coronary heart disease, the Telegraph reports. More specifically, for every 2.5 inches shorter we are, our risk increases by 13.5%. In other words, a five-foot tall person has a 32% higher risk of heart disease than a five-foot-six person does. The findings, which involved data on 200,000 people, are tied to genetics; it seems the genes involved in height could also be involved in heart disease. "The more height-increasing genetic variants that you carry, the lower your risk of coronary heart disease—and conversely, if you were genetically shorter, the higher your risk," a researcher notes.

That is, at least if you're a man, NPR reports: Researchers didn't discover a clear relationship between height and heart disease risk in women, though that might just be because the study involved more male than female subjects. Experts have been aware of an apparent relationship between height and heart disease since the 1950s without being able to explain it, NPR notes. In fact, the New York Times reports that researchers didn't take the idea that the two were linked very seriously, making these findings a surprise. "This idea that shorter stature is associated with coronary artery disease is something we would laugh about," notes one scientist. Another expert still has doubts, telling theTimes that the connection appears "weak." And on the plus side for short men, a study last year found they live longer.

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