On Tuesday, American researchers revealed that gene tests that put together over 100 genetic mutations could not prove effective when it came to predicting a woman's risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke.

Researchers then insisted that high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and a family history of cardiovascular diseases were the strongest predictors of the amount of risk a woman faces as far as heart diseases go.

Although many variations of genes have been identified that are linked with a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, putting them together into a risk prediction score did not manage to help researchers discover which women in a study which involved a total of 19,000 participants would eventually go on to develop a heart disease.

"While multiple genetic markers associated with cardiovascular disease have been identified by genome-wide association studies, their aggregate effect on risk beyond traditional factors is uncertain, particularly among women", said lead researcher Nina Paynter of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Details of the study have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.