Men who lose the Y chromosome in many immune cells face higher risks of narrow blood vessels. Narrowed vessels are a key driver of heart disease. This conclusion comes from a study analyzing more than 30,000 people.
“Loss of Y is killing a lot of men,” said Kenneth Walsh at the University of Virginia, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Men live six years shorter than females, and an enormous amount of that mortality is due to their sex chromosome instability.”
As men grow older, some of their cells start losing the Y chromosome. This usually happens in white blood cells, which protect the body from infections.
When new blood cells are made, small mistakes can occur, and more cells lose the Y chromosome over time. By age 70, about 4 out of 10 men have this loss.
In 2014, researcher Lars Forsberg found that men with Y loss lived about five years less than those without it. Later, Kenneth Walsh linked this loss to a higher risk of heart disease.
Y chromosome loss and heart disease
The Swedish CArdioPulmonary Bioimage Study (SCAPIS) offers one of the largest datasets for exploring cardiovascular risk.
The researchers studied over 30,000 participants aged 50 to 64, including detailed imaging of their coronary and carotid arteries.
