Men develop a greater risk of cardiovascular disease years earlier than women — starting at around age 35, according to a new long-term study, reports BritPanorama.
The report, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, followed more than 5,000 adults from young adulthood and found that men reached clinically significant levels of cardiovascular disease about seven years earlier than women.
Experts advise both men and women to monitor their heart health in early adulthood and to see their doctor regularly. “Heart disease doesn’t happen overnight; it develops over years. One of the things I think oftentimes people aren’t aware of is that it can start really early in your 30s or 40s,” said study coauthor Dr. Sadiya Khan, professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. She noted that even if one does not have heart disease at that time, the risk can start early.
A long-cited “10-year gap” in cardiovascular disease between men and women is driven mostly by coronary heart disease, a narrowing or clogging of the heart’s arteries caused by plaque buildup, in men. “The 10-year gap is a commonly cited statistic that men develop heart disease about 10 years before women. A lot of the initial research on that looked specifically at coronary heart disease, a subtype of cardiovascular disease,” said senior study author Alexa Freedman, assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
The analysis draws on data from 5,112 Black and White adults across four US states who were enrolled in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study between 1985 and 1986 when they were between 18 and 30 years old. All participants were healthy and free of cardiovascular disease when they enrolled in the study. Participants have been followed for a median of 34.1 years, with regular clinical exams and surveys; 160 women and 227 men experienced cardiovascular disease events.
Tracking heart health from young adulthood
Freedman stated that participants entered the study well before the onset of most cardiovascular risk, allowing researchers to precisely measure when disease emerged — a major advantage over studies that enroll patients later in life. One of the study’s most striking findings came from an analysis of rolling 10-year risk windows. Up until their early 30s, men and women had similar short-term cardiovascular risk. However, at around age 35, the risk began to diverge. Men faced a consistently higher 10-year risk than women, with approximately 6% of men at age 50 facing cardiovascular disease compared to roughly 3% of women.
Over the follow-up period, men developed cardiovascular disease earlier than women, with about 5% of men experiencing the disease by age 50 — nearly seven years earlier than women, who reached the same level around age 57.
