Women with diabetes are 44 percent more likely to develop coronary heart disease (CHD) than men with diabetes, a large global study has revealed.“Taken together, these data provide convincing evidence that diabetes poses a greater relative risk for cardiovascular diseases in women than in men,” said professor Rachel Huxley from University of Queensland in Australia.The data used stretches back almost 50 years, from 1966 to 2011, and includes 64 studies, 858,507 people and 28,203 CHD events.Women with diabetes were almost three times more likely to develop CHD compared with women without diabetes, while men with diabetes were only twice as likely to develop CHD than men without diabetes.
Combining the two sets of data showed that women with diabetes were 44 percent more likely to develop CHD than men with diabetes even after consideration was made for sex differences in other CHD factors, researchers noted.This study, the largest ever of its kind, backs up findings from a smaller analysis including fewer studies that showed a 46 percent increased risk of dying from CHD in women with diabetes compared with men with diabetes.The sex difference in diabetes-related risk for incident CHD was consistent across sub-groups defined by age and region and remained unchanged after excluding non-fatal CHD events.The study appeared in the journal Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes.