Study Into Heart Attacks Among Young Fijian NZers

Susana
Suisuiki, Pacific Waves
Presenter/Producer
Christina
Persico, RNZ Pacific Bulletin Editor

A
new study is investigating why Fijian New Zealanders are at
a higher risk of having heart attacks or developing angina
at a young age.

The research is led by the Heart
Foundation, which found that people from Fiji experience 20
percent of heart attacks or angina in under-40s in New
Zealand – despite making up just under two percent of the
country’s population.

Otago University’s research
fellow Dr Pritika Narayan said she was focusing on genetic
drivers which she suspected was a huge factor.

She
told Pacific Waves she wants to see young Fijians
lead full lives without the risks.

“There should not
be these deaths occurring so young in these families; there
must be a genetic driver,” she said.

“To see that
trait being inherited across the generations is just really
alarming, and it really needs attention. So that’s why we’re
doing this study.”

The issue is also a personal one
for Dr Narayan.

“My first cousins were affected, and
it’s their husbands who died due to cardiac arrests, one in
their 30s, one in their 40s.

“I really want to see a
future for our people, where our children – they have the
chance to grow up with both parents.”

The three-year
research is the first in the world to look for a genetic
link to premature heart disease among iTaukei Fijians and
Fijian-Indians.

Narayan said while lifestyle does play
a role, families were likely carrying a certain genetic
trait.

She pointed to historical health
records.

“For the indentured labourers, or Girmit
population that was trafficked to Fiji between 1879 and 1916
– that population undergoes quite a severe famine, and we
know this is documented both in the death and denture
records.

“But also in the rations that are actually
documented…it’s less than 1700 calories a day for 13 hours
of hard, manual labour, and it’s just not enough
food.

“And so you see very high rates of infant
mortality, very high rates of death during
childbirth.”

She said the hypothesis was that certain
traits – such as those that allowed people to store fat and
so survive when they were starving – have not adapted
adequately to modern urban living.

“Same thing with
the iTaukei – what if those traits that maybe allowed
ancestors to survive those infectious diseases, that maybe
was protective then, is maladaptive in an urban context, and
so driving maybe increased inflammation risk,” she
said.

“We don’t know, and that’s what we want to
investigate.”

Narayan said they hope to recruit at
least 40 people but they can include up to 200.

“We
hope by the end of this…two years to go, that we will have
a clear indication of some genetic drivers that are actually
driving this risk for affected
families.”

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