Around 3.3 million women in the UK are living with heart and circulatory disease. Recent study findings from the US, published in Global Heart, show that women are less likely to receive preventive recommendations – including cholesterol-lowering statins and lifestyle advice – than men with a similar risk.
Researchers also concluded that coronary heart disease has unique characteristics in women and more research is needed to establish whether treatment strategies specific to women is required. Commenting on the findings, Simon Gillespie, chief executive at the British Heart Foundation, said: “Women with heart disease are under diagnosed, undertreated and unaware that this condition can kill them. Coronary heart disease is largely preventable and so it is unacceptable that over 30,000 women die as a result of coronary heart disease each year in the UK. We need more femalefocused research into the diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease so we can set about reducing the number of women we are losing to the UK’s single biggest killer”.
