A New Model for Predicting Cardiovascular Risk in Women?

A model derived from Women’s Health Study data emphasizes traditional risk factors plus two factors not incorporated in traditional risk models.

Research on estimation of cardiovascular risk in women is fairly thin, suggesting that existing risk-prediction models (e.g., Framingham and its ATP-III version) may not accurately represent women. Using data from 24,558 initially healthy participants in the Women’s Health Study (95% white; baseline age ≥45; median follow-up, 10.2 years), researchers developed a risk algorithm for predicting incident cardiovascular events: MI, ischemic stroke, coronary revascularization, and cardiovascular death.

The researchers considered 35 variables for the prediction model, which was derived from a randomly selected 16,400 participants. Then, they compared predicted 10-year event rates with actual rates in the remaining 8158 participants (validation coho…

Reviewing Author

JoAnne M. Foody, MD