"We're looking for families where there's a strong genetic component and not necessarily the lifestyle influences. Where it's not just chance. You could spend a lot of time contacting everyone with coronary artery disease to figure out which ones have a strong genetic predisposition, but you'd be wasting a lot of time. Genealogy allows us to do that effectively and efficiently by looking across a large section of the population using the records we have. When we find families that look interesting, we can contact them regarding the particular disease they have."

They have already linked patients from their cath lab registry to the new genealogy database to get an initial impression of how well the two will mesh, Horne said.

"One of the most exciting things about that is we can do that across very distant relationships," Horne said. "Some people you link to you may not know, or you may have seen only at family reunions but have no idea of their disease history."

Another genealogical database, the Utah Population Database maintained by the University of Utah, has been used since 1975 for research, most often for cancer, Muhlestein said.

Eventually, the researchers hope to get the resources to expand their DNA sample collection beyond their own heart patients to anyone in the community who wants to contribute. They also hope to make the new database available to other researchers and for other conditions that have strong genetic ties, he said.

"We don't know for sure if this will find critically important genetics, but we know in our hearts it has to be out there," said Muhlestein. "We're excited by the potential."

---

E-mail: lois@desnews.com