Under-treatment of women at risk for heart attack and stroke is an important cause of increased mortality.

Shown above is a comparison of the preventive treatment of men and women without heart disease with exactly the same risk factors - smoking, HDL cholesterol, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and blood pressure.

The man at 50 is eligible for aggressive preventive cholesterol but a woman has to wait until she is 70 years old to become eligible for the more aggressive treatment.

HERS trial recruited post menopausal women with established coronary heart disease and all were candidates for aggressive LDL cholesterol lowering to less than 100 mg/dl. 

 

At the time of participation in the study, only 10% were treated to a LDL less than 100; 90% were not!

 

Astonishingly, even at the end of the first year, the mean LDL cholesterol for all the participants was 132.5 mg/dl!