Men and Heart Health

Men may face a significantly higher risk of dying from a heart attack than women, a new study found.

This study, which looked at lifetime risk for sudden cardiac death in more than 5,200 men and women, found that 1 in 9 men will likely experience sudden cardiac death — most before age 70 — compared to 1 in 30 women.

This is the first study to estimate lifetime sudden cardiac death risk, according to the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers who conducted it.

Sudden cardiac death is a leading cause of death in United States patients, and factors like smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol can contribute to it.

"Our paper sets the stage for thinking about how we can screen the population effectively to find out who's at risk," said senior study author Donald Lloyd-Jones, MD, ScM, and chair of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, in a press release.

All of the participants in this study were white, so these findings may not apply to other groups, these researchers noted.

This study was published recently in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Funding for this research came from the National Science Foundation and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Information on potential conflicts of interest was not available at the time of publication.