BALTIMORE – Olympic skater Sergei Grinkov had an inherited genetic variation that may explain his death from a heart attack last year at age 28, Johns Hopkins University researchers reported Thursday.

They proposed calling the variation the “Grinkov risk factor.”

The apparent link between heart disease and this common genetic variation was first reported in April by the same researchers. At the time, they said that as many as one in five people has the variant gene.

After Grinkov collapsed and died Nov. 20 in Lake Placid, N.Y., while the Olympic gold-medalist and his wife and partner, Yekaterina Gordeeva, were practicing, the scientists decided to find out whether the genetcould have played a role.

In a report in the British medical journal The Lancet, the scientists said they tested the skater’s DNA from a blood sample that was taken after his collapse and found that he did indeed have the variant gene.

They cautioned they don’t know exactly how the variant gene works. And they are not certain if it contributed to Grinkov’s death.