LOS ANGELES, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers are unraveling a type of heart disease in some women whose symptoms are harder to spot than the more common type that strikes both sexes.
"What we're saying is that in many cases heart disease is a fundamentally different disease in many women in ways that we need to pay attention to," said Dr. Noel Bairey Merz of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Instead of developing obvious blockages in the arteries supplying blood to the heart, some women accumulate plaque more evenly inside the major arteries and in smaller blood vessels, the researchers found.
The abnormalities, which appear to be particularly common in younger women, can be as dangerous as the better-known form of the disease, strangling vital blood flow to the heart muscle, causing severe and sometimes debilitating pain and fatigue, and sometimes triggering life-threatening heart attacks, The Washington Post said.
As many as 3 million U.S. women may suffer from the condition, researchers said in their ongoing study, which is published in the Feb. 7 issue of Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
