Heart attacks increasingly common in young women
14 November, 2018
New research finds a worrying trend in the incidence of heart attacks in recent decades. The results indicate that young women are more likely than young men to need hospitalization for heart attacks, as well as to develop other cardiometabolic conditions.
Cardiovascular disease — an umbrella term that covers different types of conditions that affect the heart or blood vessels, including coronary heart disease, stroke, congenital heart defects, and peripheral artery disease causes about 1 in 3 deaths in the United States.
Also, cardiovascular disease accounts for almost 836,546 deaths each year, making it the "leading killer of both women and men" in the U.S.
However, there are sex differences in the prevalence of some cardiovascular events, such as coronary heart disease — a cardiovascular condition that can ultimately lead to heart attacks.
An established body of research has shown that coronary heart disease is more prevalent among men at any age, which may have led to the common perception that "heart disease is a man's disease."
However, more recent studies have started to point out an "alarming" trend, which is a steady increase in the number of young women who die of coronary heart disease.
Now, new research, presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions meeting in Chicago and subsequently published in the journal Circulation, adds to the mounting evidence that heart attacks are increasingly common among young women.
Dr. Sameer Arora, a cardiology fellow at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, is the lead author of the study.
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