Risk factors predisposing to acute coronary syndromes in young women ≤45 years of age.

BACKGROUND: Acute coronary syndromes (ACS) are rare in young women. The purpose of this study was to characterize risk factors (RF) predisposing to ACS in young women and evaluate possible age-related differences.

METHODS AND RESULTS: We studied 1941 young women with ACS aged ≤45 years (≤45ACS) from the PL-ACS registry and compared them with two control groups: 4275 women aged 63-64 years with ACS (63-64ACS) from the PL-ACS registry and 1170 young healthy women aged ≤45 years (≤45H) without confirmed coronary artery disease (CAD), from two national, representative, cross-sectional population health surveys, NATPOL 2011 and WOBASZ. The prevalence of major RF in these three groups was as follows, respectively: (≤45 ACS vs. 63-64ACS vs. ≤45H, for all P < 0.0001): hypertension 49.8% vs. 78.1% vs. 16.8%; hypercholesterolemia 36.1% vs. 44.3% vs. 12.9%; obesity 22.3% vs. 28.1% vs. 15.6%; diabetes 10.6% vs. 29.9% vs. 1.8% and smoking 48.7% vs. 22.2% vs. 39%. Healthy women had the lowest number of major RF (1.7 ± 1.2 vs. 2.0 ± 1.1 vs. 1.1 ± 1.0). No RF was found in 16.7% vs. 8.2% vs. 34.4% women, respectively. Independent predictors of ACS in the ≤45ACS group included diabetes [odds ratio (OR) 6.66, 95% confidence interval (CI) 3.47-12.74]*, hypertension (OR 4.30, 95% CI 3.42-5.38)*, hypercholesterolemia (OR 3.45; 95% CI 2.60-4.29)*, and smoking (OR 1.63, 95% CI 1.34-1.98)*, *(P < 0.0001 for all).

CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of risk factors for acute coronary syndromes in young women with ACS is different to those in healthy women and to those in older women. The prevalence of smoking was higher. The strongest predictor of ACS in women ≤45 years of age was diabetes, with a 6-fold increase in risk. There is still need to improve the cardio-vascular primary prevention and health promotion in the population of young women.