Women do as well as men with heart treatment

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic found that women do as well as men from treatments used to avert coronary artery disease, even though more woman have high cholesterol. Dr. Stephen J. Nicholls wrote in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology that not much is know about how coronary disease forms in women. Nicholls and his associates took data from ultrasound images of the interior of the coronary arteries to see the amount of plaque deposited there. The study had 727 male subjects and 251 female subjects from 30 to 70 years old who had a clogged coronary artery. The women had less plaque in their arteries than the men, even though the women had higher blood pressure, weighed more for their height, and had higher levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. Both the men and women had comparable advances in plaque burden when they were given medicine for the heart like aspirin, ACE inhibitors, and beta-blockers. The researchers said that their findings "add further support for the promotion of aggressive preventive measures" to prevent women from cardiovascular disease. I found this article interesting because cardiovascular disease was recently discussed in class and as biomedical engineers, we will be working to ways to prevent this disease.