Hispanic women at higher risk for heart disease

ORLANDO, Fla., March 2 -- Hispanic women’s heart disease risk is comparable to the heart disease risk level of Caucasian women who are about a decade older. This disagrees with a long-held belief that Hispanic women have less heart disease than Caucasian women, researchers reported today at the American Heart Association’s 47th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention.
"The prevailing theme in medicine has been that Hispanic patients have fewer heart attacks and strokes than Caucasians, even though Hispanics seem to have equal, if not worse, cardiac risk factors and tend to be more socio-economically deprived," said John C. Teeters, M.D., study lead author and fellow in the department of cardiology, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. "In clinical practice, however, we see the opposite, with Hispanic patients who seem to have heart disease earlier than Caucasians."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/aha-hwa022007.php