Higher risks for younger women

Women under the age of 60 face a higher risk of dying during the two years following a heart attack than do men in the same age group, according to a study by a Yale researcher and collaborators. These sex-based differences in mortality rates were independent of the severity of the heart attack and other health problems, and were found only in the under-60 group of patients, the authors wrote in the Feb. 6 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The women’s survival rate might have been affected more than the men’s by “behavioral, psychosocial, and social factors such as continuing to smoke, social isolation, emotional stress and depression,” said Harlan Krumholz, M.D., a co-author of the article and associate professor of internal medicine. “The next challenge is to understand why these differences exist.”