Women: Higher coronary artery disease risk

HAMILTON, Ontario, July 13 (UPI) -- A Canadian researcher warns women with angina are at higher risk than men with angina of coronary artery disease.

Lead author Dr. Catherine Kreatsoulas at McMaster University in Hamilton says a female patient with severe angina has three times the male severe angina patient's risk of developing coronary artery disease.

The study, published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, finds that adjusting the data for variables commonly associated with coronary artery disease such as diabetes, high-blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and age increased the coronary artery disease risk by 82 percent in women with severe angina and 28 percent in men of the same age with the same condition.

Kreatsoulas said women with diabetes were particularly at risk.

"Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of ill health and death in men and women in the Western world, accounting for over one-third of deaths. In fact, more women die from coronary artery disease than breast disease," Kreatsoulas says in a statement.

"Despite this, there is still a persistent perception that coronary artery disease is a man's disease," Kreatsoulas says in a statement.

Kreatsoulas and colleagues looked at the records of 23,771 patients referred for first diagnostic angiography over a 6-year period.