While heart attacks are normally linked to older adults, this new study looked at the link between a number of heart attacks or acute myocardial infarction-related risk factors in younger people.

For the first time, a Yale-led study has pinpointed which risk factors are more likely to cause a heart attack or acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in men and women aged 55 and younger.

Researchers identified significant gender differences in AMI possible causes and the degree of relationships among young people, implying the need for a gender-specific prevention strategy. They discovered that hypertension, diabetes, depression, and poverty had larger links with AMI in women than in males.

The report was published in JAMA Network Open on May 3.

This population-based case-control study assessed the connection between a wide variety of AMI-related risk variables among younger adults. The researchers analyzed data from 2,264 AMI patients in the VIRGO (Variation in Recovery: The Role of Gender in Acute Myocardial Infarction Patient Outcomes) trial and 2,264 population-based controls adjusting for age, sex, and race from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

The main finding is that risk factors for young men and women vary. Seven risk variables were linked to a higher incidence of AMI in women: diabetes, depression, hypertension or high blood pressure, current smoking, family history of AMI, poor household income, and high cholesterol. Diabetes was the strongest link, followed by current smoking, depression, hypertension, poor household income, and history of AMI in the family. The major risk factors for AMI in men were current smoking and a family history of AMI.

According to Yuan Lu, an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine and the study’s principal author, AMI rates in younger women have risen in recent years.

“Young women with AMI are an unusual or extreme phenotype on account of their age,” she says.

“In the past, we found that young women, but not older women, have a twice higher risk of dying after an AMI than similarly aged men.

“In this new study, we now identified significant differences in risk factor profiles and risk factor associations with AMI by sex.”

The influence of different risk factors on the population was measured using population attributable risk analysis. The study discovered that seven risk variables, all of which are potentially modifiable, accounted for the majority of the total risk of AMI in both young women (83.9 percent) and young males (85.1 percent). According to Lu and her colleagues, some of these factors, such as hypertension, diabetes, depression, and poverty, had a greater influence on young women than on young males.

“This study speaks to the importance of specifically studying young women suffering heart attacks, a group that has largely been neglected in many studies and yet is about as large as the number of young women diagnosed with breast cancer,” add the authors of the study.

The researchers also discovered that type-1 AMI had a higher prevalence of classic risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol, whereas other AMI subtypes, such as type-2 AMI (which has a higher fatality rate), have a lower prevalence.

Image credit: Getty

You were reading: Risk factors that can literally break your heart at a young age, according to study