Gender-specific emerging cardiovascular risk factors and evaluation of the individual cardiovascular risk score

Introduction: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is still nowadays the main cause of death and disability among people worldwide, despite the efforts made for its prevention, it is actually more common in women. Besides the traditional CVD risk factor (CVDRF), new potentially independent sex-related CVDRF exclusive to women are emerging. Disorders of pregnancy like gestational hypertension and diabetes, endocrine pathologies such as PCOS and premature menopause, and rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and fibromialgia, are recognised by the literature to accelerate the development of CVD. Materials and methods: Our observational study was conducted on 238 women without previous pathologic cardiovascular events in their life, aged 40–69 years, who attended the Menopause and Osteoporosis Centre of the University of Ferrara. We assessed their Individual CVD Risk Score (ICVDS) using Cuore.exe software, on the basis of their clinical history, anthropometric measures and latter blood cholesterol and glycemic values. Subsequently, we made a counselling about the significance of score, promoting a healthy lifestyle and organizing a follow-up. Results: The sample was made of 238 patients, with mean age 57 years and mean ICVDS 1.77%. 67% were postmenopausal women, characterized by an average ICVDS of 2.2%, while the remnants premenopausal women had a mean ICVDS of 0.9%. The higher the body mass index (BMI) and abdominal circumference values, and the higher were their ICVDSs. The average ICVDS of patients affected by a rheumatic disorder (4.6%) was significantly higher than mean ICVDS of healthy women. Moreover 8.4% of patients were affected in the past by gestational diabetes mellitus or by pre-eclampsia and its average ICVS was slightly, even if not significantly, higher than that of people without obstetrics CVDRF. Conclusions: A more favorable lipid profile and lower levels of blood glucose, mean blood pressure, BMI and ICVDSs than rational mean values characterized our sample. Postmenopausal patients and women who had obstetrics and rheumatic CVDRF, demonstrate to have a higher ICVDS than otherwise healthy patients, and the values were statistical significantly in the second subgroup.