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Nurses Study: Lean, but Sedentary Women have 150% Greater Risk of Heart Disease Than Lean, Physically Active Women
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) -- U.S. women still do not fully understand their high risk
of heart disease and are confused by reports that suggest being
overweight and inactive are not really that dangerous, the American
Heart Association said on Tuesday.
Statistics released on Tuesday show 483,800 American women died from
heart disease and stroke in 2003, the latest year for which detailed
statistics are available.
Six million women had coronary heart disease and 3.1 million had
strokes, the association said in a special issue of its journal
Circulation.
"That's more lives than were claimed by the next five leading causes of
death combined: cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
Alzheimer's, diabetes and accidents," the Heart Association said.
But only 55 percent of 1,008 women surveyed knew that heart disease is
the No. 1 killer of U.S. women over the age of 25 -- although that is
up from 30 percent in 1997.
Just 38 percent of blacks and 34 percent of Hispanic women knew heart
disease was their biggest disease risk, the Heart Association said.
Women also fail to realize the importance of exercise and weight loss,
said Dr. Frank Hu, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology
at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Hu studied 88,393 women between the ages of 34 and 59 who were taking
part in the larger Nurses' Health Study. He found that those who were
obese and who did not exercise were 3.4 times more likely to have heart
disease over the 20 years of the study.
Those who were active but obese were 2.48 times more likely to have
heart disease. Those who were at a normal weight but who did not
exercise were 1 1/2 times as likely to have heart disease as the very
few women who were both lean and who exercised regularly.
Fit and fat
"A high level of physical activity did not eliminate the risk of
coronary heart disease associated with obesity and leanness did not
counteract the increased coronary heart disease risk associated with
inactivity," Hu told reporters in a telephone briefing.
"Obese, sedentary smoking women had 9.4 times the risk of coronary heart disease compared to lean, active women."
Hu said the findings countered some recent studies that suggested people could get away with being fat if they exercised.
"Both fitness and weight are independent and serious predictors of heart risk," Hu said.
Dr. Lori Mosca of New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York said
doctors and patients alike often are misled by news reports of
individual studies.
"I think what women find confusing is the mixed messages about diet and lifestyle and drug therapy," Mosca told the briefing.
"What happens is when studies get reported one week and then the next
week there is a study showing a completely different finding, that
confuses the public and doctors alike," she said.
"In science and medicine there is rarely a single report that is definitive and changes medical practice."
Another study in Circulation showed that women in Europe do not get the
same treatment for heart disease as men do -- echoing recent U.S.
findings.
"Women are under-investigated and under-treated," said Caroline Daly, a
cardiologist in training at the Royal Brompton and Harefield National
Health Service Trust in London.
Her study of more than 3,700 patients with chest pain at 197 centers
across Europe showed women were less likely to get a standard
electrocardiogram or to get drugs to treat heart disease.
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