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Each year, 10,000 American women under age 45 suffer a myocardial infarction (MI) and have roughly twice the risk for hospital mortality as similarly aged men. To study the various stressors on myocardial function in post-MI patients, investigators recruited 49 women within 6 months of MI and age matched them to 49 men with MI. The groups had similar numbers of participants aged 50 or younger and with non-ST elevation MIs.
Patients underwent single-proton emission computed tomography (SPECT) scans of myocardial perfusion at rest and during mental-stress and physical-stress tests. For the mental-stress task, participants had 5 minutes to prepare and present a videotaped talk to a “white-coat” audience concerning an imagined mistreated sick re…