Hispanic Women Face Higher Cardiac Risk Factors

Filed in archive Latin News on March 14, 2007

From HealthDay:

"Hispanic women develop cardiac risk factors much earlier than white women, typically exhibiting the heart health of a white woman 10 years older, a new study finds.

The research suggests that being Hispanic may be an independent risk factor for heart disease, and that these women need to be identified and treated earlier.

"The tendency for medical practice is to assume that hispanics have a delayed onset or less prevalence of cardiac disease, and our study shows that they have earlier onset and the same risk as Caucasians," said study author Dr. John Teeters, a cardiology fellow at the University of Rochester Medical Center in Rochester, N.Y.

"Physicians should be more aggressively targeting this population for identification of risk factors such as cholesterol and obesity and recognizing that a 20- or 30-year-old Hispanic may have the same risk factors as a 30- or 40-year-old Caucasian," he said".

The article use the "illegal alien" expression, which I find offensive. But the subject is important, never the less, and its worth reading.

Another article, from the American Heart Association talk about a study published in "Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association" in a special Latin American-themed issue called "Heart Disease in Latin America". Also worth reading, it points out some factors that you should be paying attention to:

"The Latin American study found that 10 risk factors combined are responsible of 88 percent of the heart attacks in Latin America. Six individual factors more than doubled the risk of heart attack:

- Persistent psychological stress (odds ratio 2.81)
- History of high blood pressure (odds ratio 2.81)
- History of diabetes (odds ratio 2.59)
- Current smoking (odds ratio 2.31)
- Waist-to-hip ratio in upper third of participants compared with those in lower third (odds ratio 2.49)
- ApoB/ApoA1 ratio in upper third of participants compared with lower third (odds ratio 2.31).

Two factors - exercising regularly (odds ratio .67) and eating fruits and vegetables every day (odds ratio .63) - significantly lowered the risk of heart attack. Researchers also studied alcohol (odds ratio 1.05) and depression (odds ratio 1.17), but they were not associated with heart attack risk."

Advice: read both articles, and please take care of your corazón. It's really important - for you and for your loved ones.

Hispanic Women's Hearts at High Risk: Study
Latin Americans can reduce heart attack risk by lifestyle changes