What do George Clooney and a healthy heart have in common?

Scientists have discovered that a maths ratio associated with great beauty in art, architecture and nature may also be an indicator of a healthy heart.

The Golden Ratio, or "divine proportion" rule, is a ratio associated with natural and man-made structures of great beauty.

Examples include the dimensions of the Parthenon in Athens, the arrangement of cauliflower florets and even George Clooney's face! It is also related to the Fibonacci number sequence in Dan Brown's blockbusting book, The Da Vinci code.

Now scientists say this ratio can also be an indicator of a healthy heart.

In a study, they looked at blood pressure measurements of over 160,000 people in Western Australia who had taken part in a health promotion programme.

They found that people who had blood pressure readings close to the Golden Ratio, which is approximately 1.618, were less likely to have a fatal heart attack.

But those in the study who suffered fatal heart attacks had a higher ratio of 1.7459.

Blood pressure is measured as two numbers - the pressure at the maximum (systolic) and the minimum (diastolic) of the heart's regular rhythm.

The study, published online in the British Medical Journal, was by led by Professor Hanno Ulmer from Innsbruck Medical University in Austria.

"Although this finding is not likely to be of practical relevance for individual clinicians, at a population level this may be an important phenomenon and should be investigated in other cohorts," the authors said.

This article was published on Mon 14 December 2009