Author: Linda Carroll / Source: TODAY.com
Shawn Sherlock was a healthy 44-year-old mom who ate right and ran regularly. But on a January morning in 2017 as Sherlock was making breakfast for her two boys, her jaw started to ache and then an excruciating pain shot down her left arm.
“I thought, this could not be a heart attack,” Sherlock remembers.
“I am too young and healthy.”But something told Sherlock she’d better take this seriously. “I thought, I don’t want my boys to see me drop dead in front of them,” the Boca Raton, Florida, businesswoman told NBC News.
When her husband saw her, he knew something was very wrong and rushed her to the hospital. “Within a few hours I was in surgery and getting two stents to save my life,” she said.
That morning Sherlock joined the growing number of young women having heart attacks in the U.S.
Heart attacks are on the rise in young people, especially women.
While deaths due to heart disease had been decreasing steadily, those improvements plateaued recently and researchers may now know at least part of the reason why: Heart attacks are on the rise in younger people, especially women.
Between 1995 and 1999, 27 percent of those hospitalized for heart attacks were between the ages of 35 and 54, a new study found. Between 2010 and 2014 that number had climbed to 32 percent, with heart attacks in women showing the greatest increase, rising from 21 to 31 percent, according to a study published Tuesday in Circulation (and early online in November).
During the same time period, heart attacks also rose in younger men, but not as quite as dramatically: In men between 35 and 54, heart attacks climbed from 30 percent to 33 percent. While the percentage of heart attacks occurring in young men went up during the 20 years covered by the study, the actual number of heart attack in men in this age group went down. Young women did not see a similar decline, the researchers reported.
“The greater percentage of heart attacks among younger patients is alarming,” said study co-author Melissa Caughey, an instructor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. “And that’s especially true in light of the fact that the population is aging.”
The damage sustained in a heart attack can lead to heart failure and other issues later in life, Caughey explained.
Women are less likely to receive the right medication.
Caughey and her colleagues explored heart attack trends using data from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, which has been tracking hospitalizations for heart attacks in four geographically defined regions of the U.S. (Forsyth County, North Carolina; Washington County, Maryland; Jackson, Mississippi; and eight suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota).
Along with the dramatic increase in heart attacks in young women, the researchers also found that these hospitalized women were less likely than their male counterparts to receive guideline-recommended medications such as non-aspirin blood thinners (17 percent lower), cholesterol- lowering drugs (13 percent lower) and beta-blockers (4 percent lower). They were also 21 percent less likely than men to receive therapies to open clogged arteries.
“This is a very important study,” said Dr. Erin Michos, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology…
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