Diabetic Women under age 60 are at a greater risk of developing heart diseases, a new study finds.
Heart diseases are the leading cause of death among both men and women in the United States. It claims more than 1 million lives annually. According to statistics on leading websites, every 33 seconds someone in the country dies from a cardiovascular disease which is roughly the equivalent of a 9/11 tragedy repeating itself every 24 hours, 365 days a year.
Generally, the risk of developing such diseases is greater among men below 60 compared to women in the same age group. However, women under the age of 60 with type 2 diabetes are at much greater risk of coronary artery disease than previously believed. This risk increases by four times among such women, making it roughly equal to men's risk of the heart disease.
"Our findings suggest that we need to work harder to prevent heart disease in women under 60 who have diabetes," said Rita Rastogi Kalyani, M.D., M.H.S., endocrinologist at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead study author. "This study tells us that women of any age who have diabetes are at a high risk for coronary artery disease."
On the contrary, being diabetic had no effect on a man's risk of developing heart diseases. This study is the first to focus specifically on gender differences in coronary artery disease among younger and middle-aged people with diabetes.
For the study, researchers examined the data of 10,000 participants in three widely regarded studies: the GeneSTAR Research Program, the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) III. None of the participants had a history of heart disease. All three studies yielded similar gender differences in rates of diabetes and the risk of developing heart disease.
"Our study adds to growing evidence that gender differences exist in the risk of coronary artery disease brought on by diabetes," Kalyani said.
She also noted that the findings of this study were unrelated to differences in obesity and other traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking.
