|
|
Cholesterol
Guidelines for Women’s Cardiovascular Health Issued
The American Heart Association today announced new guidelines for preventing heart disease and stroke in women based on a woman’s individual cardiovascular health. The guidelines are published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for men and women in the United States. It kills nearly 500,000 women each year.
The guidelines are based on the highest-quality evidence from all the available research related to CVD prevention. According to the new recommendations, the aggressiveness of treatment should be linked to whether a woman has low, intermediate or high risk of having a heart attack in the next 10 years, based on a standardized scoring method developed by the Framingham Heart Study. Low risk means a woman has a less than 10 percent chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years, intermediate risk is a 10 to 20 percent chance, and high risk is a greater than 20 percent chance.
Aspirin recommendations illustrate how recommended therapy varies across three levels of risk. For all high-risk women and for those who have documented cardiovascular disease, aspirin is recommended, but is not recommended for low-risk women. Among intermediate-risk women, aspirin can be considered as long as blood pressure is controlled and the benefit is likely to outweigh the risk of side effects such as gastrointestinal bleeding or hemorrhagic stroke.
Lifestyle interventions such as smoking cessation, regular physical activity, heart-healthy diet and weight maintenance were given a strong priority in all women, not only because of their potential to reduce existing CVD, but also because heart-healthy lifestyles may prevent major risk factors from developing.
ACE inhibitors and beta-blockers were recommended for all high-risk women.
The guidelines also include a strong recommendation that high-risk women, even those with low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels below 100 mg/dL, should receive cholesterol-lowering drugs, preferably statins. Routine statin therapy has not previously been recommended for these women, but recent studies have shown a benefit in this subgroup. The use of niacin and fibrates, other cholesterol-lowering drugs of particular benefit in specific cases, is also discussed.
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
