“It can be detrimental to a woman’s health,” said Susan Cheng, MD, MPH, MMSc, associate professor of cardiology and director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology at the Schmidt Heart Institute and senior author. study. “Based on our research results, we recommend that the medical community re-evaluate blood pressure guidelines that do not account for gender differences.”
The first number in a blood pressure reading is called the systolic pressure and measures the force of blood against the artery walls as your heart beats. The second number is diastolic pressure, the blood pressure against the artery walls between heartbeats. For years, 120 mmHg has been considered the normal upper limit for systolic blood pressure in adults.
Persistently rising above this threshold leads to high blood pressure—which is known to be a major risk factor for common heart diseases, such as heart attack, heart failure, and stroke. In their latest study, Cheng and her research team examined blood pressure measurements made in four community-based cohort studies involving more than 27,000 participants, 54% of whom were women.
In doing so, the research team identified that men had a risk threshold of 120 mmHg, with women having a risk threshold of 110 mmHg or less. Systolic blood pressure levels that exceeded these thresholds were associated with an increased risk of developing any type of heart disease, including heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.
The investigators also found that women had a lower blood pressure threshold than men for each specific heart disease risk, including heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.” Now that prompted us to reconsider. What we thought was a normal blood pressure that could keep a woman or a man safe from developing heart disease or stroke,” said Cheng, director of cardiovascular population science at the Barbara Streisand Women’s Heart Center. and Erica J. in Women’s Heart Health and Population Science. Glazer Chair. ,
These findings build on previous research led by Cheng that suggests women’s blood vessels age faster than men’s. Cheng’s research, published last year, confirmed that women have different biology and physiology than men and also explained why women may be more likely to develop certain types of heart disease at different points in life. .
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With both the 2020 study and their latest work, Cheng and her team compared women to women and men to men, not with the usual model of comparing women to men.” If the ideal physiological range of blood pressure is indeed There is a need to re-evaluate current approaches to using sex-agnostic targets to reduce high blood pressure, said Christine Albert, M.P.H. This important work is far-reaching and has many clinical implications.