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Women with diabetes 6 times more likely to have heart attack

Researchers found that smoking among younger women was also a significant risk factor.

By Stephen Feller

LONDON, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- Women younger than 45 with diabetes were found to be six times more likely to have myocardial infraction, or heart attack, than those who do not have the condition, researchers found in a large study.

The influence of diabetes, as well as other factors, that can cause heart attack in younger women was independent of whether women were obese.

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"The lack of a correlation with obesity could be because of the overwhelming influence of diabetes in this population," Hanna Szwed, a researcher at the Institute of Cardiology in Warsaw, Poland, said in a press release. "We also found that the risk of myocardial infraction in young women increased with the number of coexisting factors."

Researchers considered data on 7,386 women collected as part of the Polish Registry of Acute Coronary Syndromes, the Multicenter Study of State National Population Health, and National Survey of Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Diseases. Of those women, 1,941 women younger than 45 with myocardial infraction, as well as 4,275 women between age 63 and 64 and 1,170 healthy women younger than 45 who did not have myocardial infraction.

The study was focused on five risk factors, four of which were shown to be independent predictors for myocardial infraction in the younger women. Diabetes was the strongest, increasing risk by sixfold. High blood pressure increased risk by four times, high cholesterol tripled risk and current smoking increased the risk by 1.6 times. Obesity, however, showed no statistical significance in developing myocardial infraction when expressed by body mass index.

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In older women, researchers reported that all five of the risk factors played an even stronger role in developing myocardial infraction. Smoking, however, had a significantly greater risk for young women than for older women. Szwed said that better prevention efforts against smoking were necessary, but also that more research into heart problems in women was necessary to understand the risks.

"At present there are not enough global scientific reports focused on the problem of coronary heart disease in young populations, particularly in women," Szwed said. "More research is needed into this growing problem to deepen our knowledge, improve prevention efforts and reduce mortality."

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