Mr Michael Jenkins Consultant Vascular Surgeon discusses the genetic links associated with aneurysms.
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Can aneurysm be hereditary? Again, so it's well known that they run in families. And then we've got some very good examples where the genetics is well known. So like a lot of so-called inherited conditions, there are extreme examples where the genetic problem is known. So conditions such as Marfan, Lewis-Dietz, certain connective tissue diseases, Ehrlers-Danlos, which affects joints and makes them very lax, also affects the connective tissue around the aneurysm of the arterial wall. And in these three named conditions, those people get aneurysms, one, at a very early age, and two, they tend to get aneurysms in slightly unusual arteries, compared with a conventional atherosclerotic population, get them in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s, and get them in very typical areas of the body. These other genetic inherited ones are stranger aneurysms at a much earlier age and are much more difficult to repair because the integrity of the arterial wall is really poor. Conventional aneurysms, as I say, occur much later and we know the risk factors for those, but even amongst those, they often run in families.
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