February 16th, 2010
Tuesday, February 16 News Roundup: Women & CV Disease — HRT, Genetic Testing, and More
Larry Husten, PHD
HRT & Increased Risk: A new report from the Women’s Health Initiative in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds “no suggestion of a decreased risk for CHD … within the first 2 years” of HRT, even in women who started therapy within 10 years after menopause. For women who started HRT close to menopause, a “possible” cardioprotective effect was observed after 6 years of use.
Genetic Testing in Women: A genetic risk score composed of 101 SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) did not improve cardiovascular risk prediction in more than 19,000 women enrolled in the Women’s Genome Health Study, according to a report by Paynter et al. in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors conclude:
“First, genome-wide testing is increasingly available and marketed to the general public. Our study finds no clinical utility in a multilocus panel of SNPs for cardiovascular risk based on the best available literature. Second, our data confirm the utility of intermediate phenotypes such as total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and blood pressure in as much as genetic risk scores were no longer significant after adjustment for these phenotypes…. Third, our findings confirm the importance of family history of cardiovascular disease, which integrates shared genetics, shared behaviors, and environmental factors. At the same time, we believe that our data suggest areas for further biomarker research, which may improve prediction.”
Special Issue: The new issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes is a special themed issue on women and CV disease. One report from the Women’s Health Initiative finds that a simplified strategy for assessing cardiovascular risk can predict risk over the following 10 years. Another study confirms that women continue to be underrepresented in research. An accompanying editorial notes that there are still “more questions than answers” in this crucial area.
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