Women, African-Americans More Prone to Cardiovascular Issues

Taking the right preventative measures can be essential for those at an increased risk for certain health issues. Unfortunately, some may be at risk than others. 

A recent study published in the journal Circulation identifies specific risk factors for heart health, showing that women and African-Americans are more prone to related health issues than men or other ethnicities. 

For their findings, researchers examined data on more than 13,500 Americans from 1987 to 1998 in order to calculate the population attributable risk, which takes into account how common certain risk factors are and how much risk factors contribute to heart disease.

Researchers specifically focused on five factors that contribute to the problem, including high cholesterol, high blood pressure (hypertension), obesity, diabetes and smoking.

Over a 10-year-period, they found that the combined risk for heart disease was the same for African-Americans at 67 percent. During that time, the combined risk for whites fell from 56 percent to 48 percent and the combined risk for women and men fell from 68 percent to 58 percent, and 51 percent to 48 percent.

Findings showed that heart disease risk factors appeared to affect women and African-Americans more than other groups. For instance, women with diabetes also had a 21 percent increased risk of heart disease in comparison to the 14 percent increased risk for diabetic men. African-Americans were also twice as likely to have diabetes than other individuals as well as suffer from related heart complications. 

"It's really important for us to address all the risk factors, but also be aware that women and African-Americans are really susceptible for high risk of heart disease with the presence of diabetes or high blood pressure," concluded Dr. Nieca Goldberg, medical director of the Women's Heart Program at New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center, via Health Day.