Khaberni - A recent medical study has revealed that the risk of heart disease in men begins to increase significantly in their mid-thirties, years before the age at which most screening and prevention programs begin, while this increase appears later in women.
The study, led by researchers from Northwestern University in the United States and published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, was based on health monitoring that lasted more than three decades, enabling early changes in heart health to be observed since youth.
The results showed that men reach a 5% risk level of cardiovascular disease about seven years earlier than women on average. Most of this difference is due to coronary artery disease, the main cause of heart attacks, rather than strokes or heart failure.
The study indicated that the cardiovascular risks were similar between the genders until about age 35, before beginning to rise at a faster pace in men, and remain higher throughout midlife.
The principal researcher in the study, Alexa Friedman, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, said, "Heart disease does not appear suddenly but develops over decades, and early indicators are often present from youth."
The researchers sought to determine whether traditional risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and lifestyle, explain this early difference between men and women.
Although some of these factors, especially high blood pressure, partially contributed to explaining the gap, they alone were not sufficient to justify the clear chronological advancement of heart disease in men, suggesting a potential role for other biological or social factors not yet fully understood.
Health tracking since youth
The study relied on data from the CARDIA project (the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults), which followed more than 5,100 black and white individuals aged between 18 and 30 years at its inception in the 1980s, and their monitoring continued until 2020.
Thanks to the participants being healthy at the start of the study, researchers were able to identify the time when the heart risk began to diverge between genders. They found that men reached a 2% incidence of coronary artery disease more than ten years before women. However, rates of stroke were similar between the genders, while differences in heart failure appeared at older ages.
The results highlight a potential gap in prevention strategies, as most cardiac screening programs focus on those over forty years old. Researchers believe that this approach may miss a "golden window" for early intervention, especially in men. They noted that modern prediction equations developed by the American Heart Association, capable of estimating heart risks starting from age thirty, could represent an important tool for enhancing early prevention. The study also pointed out that young men are less likely to undergo regular screenings compared to women, increasing the chances of discovering the disease in its advanced stages.
Although heart disease remains the leading cause of death for both men and women, these results affirm that early prevention, especially in men, might be key to reducing future health burdens.
