The global study assessed risk factors, including metabolic , behavioral , and psychosocial in about 156,000 people without a history of CVD between the ages of 35 and 70. Living in 21 low, middle and high-income countries on five continents, they were followed for an average of 10 years.
"Women and men have similar CVD risk factors, which emphasizes the importance of a similar strategy for the prevention of CVD in men and women," said the paper's first author Marjan Walli-Attaei, a research fellow at the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences .
High levels of bad cholesterol and symptoms of depression were more strongly associated with CVD risk in men than in women. The patterns of these findings were generally similar in high-income countries and upper-middle-income countries, and in low-income and lower-middle-income countries.