The recent scientific result was made jointly by a research team headed by Chen Yihan, director of the Research Institute of Medical Genetics under the Shanghai-based Tongji University, and a second team headed by Xu Shijie at the southern branch of the state research center for the human genome. The research was financed by the State Natural Science Fund, Shanghai Natural Science Fund and a Ministry of Education fund.

The achievement was reported by the prestigious US-based Science magazine earlier this month. It has aroused great interest among scientists in medical genetics around the world and praised as an exciting breakthrough.

The incidence of auricular fibrillation is said to increase with age. It affects about one percent of adults aged below 40, rising to 2.3 percent of adults above 40 and up to more than 5 percent for those older than 65.

Auricular fibrillation may cause a reduction in sport endurance and thrombosis including strokes, encourage heart failure and increase the death rate from basal heart diseases. One third of strokes among the aged population are caused by auricular fibrillation.

The discovery of the gene that causes auricular fibrillation indicated China's great potential in the life science field, the 38-year-old Chen Yihan said.

(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2003)