Background: Atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases are a common cause of death, with differences between men and women being discussed in the literature. However, studies analysing sex differences based on known risk scores in Germany are lacking.
Methods: Based on the NAKO study, all participating citizens in Germany without atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, peripheral artery disease, and stroke) or diabetes mellitus, and aged ≥40 years, were included. To determine the risk, we used the SCORE2 and SCORE2-OP of the ESC. In addition, we compared the results for male and female sex.
Results: Of overall 142,101 citizens, 51.94% were female and 48.06% were male. The mean age of women and men was 54.41 and 53.85 years, the mean systolic blood pressure 145.04 and 144.55 mmHg, and the mean SCORE2 or SCORE2-OP was 3.96 and 6.86%. Significantly more men smoked (19.25% women vs 22.31% men, p<0.001). Comparing the respective risk score categories, it is noticeable that a large proportion of women are in the low-to-moderate risk category (59.30%). 37.01% are categorized as high risk and only 3.69% are in the very high risk category. In contrast, only 15.26% of men are in the low-to-moderate risk category, while 60.36% are categorized in the high risk category and 24.37% in the very high risk category. This difference is statistically significant (p<0.001).
Conclusion: In our comparison of risk scores for atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases between men and women, it is noticeable that the risk distribution differs significantly. Men exhibit a higher average risk and are in comparatively higher risk categories.
