The 'Red Alert for Women's Hearts' conference, taking place on 5 November 2009, at the European Heart House, Sophia Antipolis, France, will address the subject of Women and CVD. The conference is jointly organised by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and European Heart Network (EHN), as part of Work Package 6 of the EuroHeart project .
Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death for women worldwide, killing more than 8.6 million, more than the total number who die from cancer, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.
However, the risk for women is largely under-estimated, by both the general population and often by the medical profession itself. This is due to the fact that women usually suffer from CVD 10 years later in their life than men: the risk increases after menopause, partly because of ovarian hormone deficiency that favours hypertension, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, central obesity and the metabolic syndrome.
In the report that will be presented at the conference, Professor Stramba Badiale, MD, PhD at the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, IRCCS Istituto Auxologico Italiano, finds that women are underrepresented in cardiovascular research in Europe. "In the 62 randomized clinical trials published between 2006 and July 2009, only 33.5% of enrolled participants were women," he says.
This underrepresentation is particularly noticeable in the fields of cholesterol-lowering therapy, ischaemic heart disease and heart failure.
Professor Roberto Ferrari, President of the ESC says: "With regard to cardiovascular health, we do lack data for women simply because the majority of clinical trials are conducted on men. It is important to have special clinical trials conducted only on women because their cardiovascular pathology is, at least at some point during their lives, different from that of men and it is incorrect to apply data derived from studies on men to women."
Another finding of the report that supports the conference programme is that only 50% of the clinical trials conducted in the last three years which enrolled both men and women reported the analysis of the results by gender.
Susanne Logstrup, director of the EHN, regrets that, as a result, "safety and efficacy of several drugs have been evaluated predominantly in male populations."
Professor Stramba-Badiale is hopeful that the report and the conference will encourage new practice amongst the research community, with a systematic enrolment of women in clinical trials. "New data should improve the clinical management of CVD and, in the future, develop possible gender specific diagnostic and therapeutic strategies," he says.