Women With Cardiovascular Disease Receive Less Life-Saving Treatment

Women with cardiovascular disease are treated with cholesterol-lowering therapies less often than men, according to a study presented at European Society of Cardiology Preventive Cardiology 2024, the annual congress of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs save lives and prevent heart attacks, and they should be prescribed to all patients with coronary artery disease,” said study author Dr. Nina Johnston, of Uppsala University in Sweden, via a press release. “Unfortunately, our study shows that women are missing out on these essential medications.”

Despite the fact that women have the same treatment recommendations for lowering low-density lipoprotein, or “bad,” cholesterol, previous studies have shown that women are less likely to achieve target levels than men. Researchers of this analysis sought to determine whether women and men receive the same treatments.

In their retrospective, observational study, they assessed 1037 men (median age, 68 years) and 415 women (median age, 70 years) who had a chronic coronary syndrome diagnosed between 2012 and 2020 and had never had a heart attack. The investigators used electronic health records to determine cholesterol levels. Patients in the population of interest were followed up for 3 years following their diagnosis.

According to the findings, just 54% of women were treated with cholesterol-lowering drugs compared with 74% of men. Moreover, only 5% of women were treated with statin plus ezetimibe compared with 8% of men. Dr. Johnston noted that further investigation is now needed to explain these sex differences. She and her colleagues concluded that the findings “should be a wake-up call about the undertreatment of women with heart disease. Equal prescribing practices are needed so that women receive all recommended therapies and are protected from adverse outcomes.”

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