Heart Disease: The World's Number One Killer

Heart disease is the number one killer in the world. By 2010, India's population is expected to account for 60 percent of the world's heart disease cases.

One percent of the world's population has a genetic mutation that makes them almost guaranteed to have heart trouble, but in South Asia, the frequency of the mutation reaches 4%.

The mutation on the heart protein gene MYBPC3 was discovered five years ago in two Indian families with cardiomyopathy, but its significance was not realized until a broader study including almost 1,500 people across India was done.