Smaller difference seen between midlife male, female heart attacks

William Atkins
Tuesday, 27 October 2009 18:22

Science - Space

According to U.S. research in a comparision of heart attacks between men and women 35 to 54 years of age, men still have more heart attacks than women, but the gap is narrowing between them.


The paper summarizing their work appears in the Archives of Internal Medicine (Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(19):1762-1766).

The paper is entitled “Sex-Specific Trends in Midlife Coronary Heart Disease Risk and Prevalence.”

Its authors are Amytis Towfighi and Ling Zheng (both from the Department of Neurology at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles); and Bruce Ovbiagele (Department of Neurology at the University of California at Los Angeles).

The authors performed research in the prevalence of heart attacks for men and women at midlife (around 35 to 54 years of age) because “… little is known about current sex-specific trends in symptomatic cardiovascular disease.” [Abstract to paper]

Thus, their goal was to learn more about gender differences of myocardial infarction (MI, or heart attack) and the risk of future coronary heart disease.

Thus, they analyzed over 4,000 adults in the United States who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) from 1988 to 1994 and 1999 to 2004. At the time of their study, these adults were between 35 and 54 years of age.

The results of the study, using the Framingham coronary risk score (FCRS), found that men had a higher incidence of heart attacks than women, when both are within the range of 35 to 54 years of age.

Page two continues with more conclusions from the study.