In a new study, researchers found women with diabetes and high levels of calcium in their coronary arteries have higher rates of death from heart disease and all causes than their male counterparts do.
The research was conducted by a team from the University of California, Irvine, and elsewhere.
In the study, the team tested 4,503 adults with diabetes from a national registry of patients who received coronary calcium “heart scans” from computed tomography and were followed for causes of death over more than 11 years.
They compared the sex-specific impact of coronary artery calcium (CAC) levels in adults with diabetes.
They used CAC to predict cardiovascular and all-cause death in patients with diabetes.
The results of this comparison showed greater CAC predicts cardiovascular and total mortality more strongly in women.
The team found that coronary calcium scores of greater than 100 in a woman with diabetes were linked to higher death rates from heart diseases and all causes than similar calcium scores in women than in man with diabetes.
Death rates from cardiovascular disease in those who had coronary calcium scores of 101-400 or more, were approximately twice as high in women compared to men.
Total death rates in these patients were also higher in women than in men.
These findings showed levels of coronary calcium to predict death from cardiovascular causes more strongly in women than men with diabetes.
It might also help to explain the poorer prognosis for cardiovascular disease that has been observed for decades in women compared to men with diabetes.
Conversely, very low death rates from coronary heart disease and cardiovascular disease seen in those with diabetes who had negative scans (calcium scores of 0), comprising 39% of women and 20% of men in our study.
This underscores the point that not all persons with diabetes are ‘risk equivalents’ for cardiovascular disease, as has been the common belief for decades.
The study suggests a call-to-action for even more aggressive risk factor management in a woman with diabetes found to have significant levels of coronary calcium to prevent future death from heart disease causes.
One author of the study is Nathan D. Wong, a professor and director for UC Irvine’s Heart Disease Prevention Program.
The study is published in Diabetes Care.
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