According to the World Health Organization, 17 million people die of heart disease and stroke every year and 80 per cent these deaths occur in developing countries. Recent research revealed that presence of a gene mutation increases the risk of heart disease seven-fold. Researchers revealed that 1% of the world's population carries this gene mutation. Around 4% people from the Indian subcontinent have the mutation. Researchers studied the mutation in 800 people with heart disease and 700 controls. They found that in the test tube, cells with the mutation - where 25 letters of genetic code are missing - the MYBPC3 protein is abnormal and "messes up" the structure of the heart muscle.

Research team believed that body of young people seemed to have an effective mechanism for breaking down and removing the mutated protein but with age the mechanism stops working efficiently which is why heart disease in people carrying the gene develops in middle age.

One of the study authors, Chris Tyler-Smith, a senior investigator at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK, and said that the mutation probably arose around
30,000 years ago and has been able to spread because its effects usually develop only after people have had their children.

He said that "in principle" it would be extremely easy to test people at a young age for the gene but at the moment all that doctors could do would be to offer healthy lifestyle advice.

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said the study underpins the strong genetic nature of heart disease.

He added: "It provides good grounds for screening people of South Asian origin with unexplained heart failure and screening their families if positive."