Genetics of your heart beat

Our hearts have 4 sections. The top 2 get blood. The bottom 2 push blood out. The right side deals with blood that needs oxygen. The left side with blood that has oxygen. Electrical pulses control the timing of all this. They control the rhythm of our heart. And how fast our heart beats. An electrocardiogram, or ECG, is a record of our heartbeat. It records all the electrical pulses of our heart. This is the heartbeat you can see. On a screen. Or a strip of paper. It look like waves. There are three main “waves.” A little one. Then a big “spike.” Then one more little one. The last one is more stretched out than the first. It is also a little taller. Each part of an ECG gets a letter. The first wave, P, is when the heart pushes blood from the top sections to the bottom. The second wave is 3 short waves. There is a little dip down. This is the Q wave. This happens when the heart is getting ready to push blood out. The R wave is the “spike.” It is when the heart pumps blood out. The spike is tall because it takes a lot to push blood out. It is skinny because this happens fast. The S wave is also a dip. It is right after the heart pumps out the blood. These three make up the “QRS” wave. The last wave is T. It is when the bottom sections reset. They set back up for the next time they need to pump. The QT interval is the distance between the start of the QRS wave to the end of T wave. It is the time from the bottom sections getting ready to pump, Q, to when they have reset. That is the end of the T wave. The QT interval tells us if the bottom sections of your heart are working well. Or if you might have a problem. Lots of things can change your QT interval. Certain drugs can affect it. Low levels of potassium. High blood pressure. Other types of heart disease. Genetics can also play a part. Most of these make it longer. Scientists at Vanderbilt University Medical Center will use BioVU to study the QT interval. They will look for people who are healthy. And are not taking any drugs that might change their ECG. Then they will look for gene changes. We know some gene changes affect your QT interval. They will compare what they find to what we know. They want to find out who is at risk for changes in their QT interval. They will also factor in age and gender. They will compare the gene change risk to the risk from other things. Like lab tests, lifestyle, and past medical history. The sooner we know if you are at risk, the sooner we can start to help. We want to delay or even stop any changes to your heartbeat. We want to keep your heartbeat strong and steady.