More Young Women Are Having Heart Attacks, Study Says. This Could Be Why

Younger women are having more heart attacks, and accounted for nearly a third of all female heart attack patients in recent years, according to a recent study. The news compounds a string of recent findings that have pointed to poorer overall health for young American women. “Women now, compared to younger women generations before them, are less healthy,” says study co-author Melissa Caughey, a cardiovascular epidemiologist and instructor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Medicine. “It’s probably reflective of poorer health in general.” The study, which appeared in a special women’s health edition of the journal Circulation, looked at the medical records of nearly 30,000 people ages 35 to 74 who were hospitalized for a heart attack between 1995 and 2014. By the end of that time period, nearly a third of patients were considered “young” (ages 35 to 54), up from 27% in 1995 to 1999, according to the study. And that increase seemed to be driven largely by female patients, the paper says. From 1995-1999, 21% of hospitalized female heart attack patients were young. But by 2010-2014, that number had risen to 31%, the paper says. Meanwhile, younger patients accounted for a larger proportion of male heart attack hospitalizations, but rates increased more slowly, climbing from 30% to 33% of admissions between 1999 and 2014. The researchers also found that younger women who had heart attacks were more likely than ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized healthytime onetime Research Source Type: news