Boys Naturally At Greater Risk For Heart Disease
Researchers have found that boys’ natural developmental processes put them at a greater risk for heart disease.
Scientists followed more than 500 schoolchildren in Minneapolis, Minn., from the ages of 11 to 19. Over the course of the study, readings of known risk factors for heart disease were different between boys and girls. The study found:
* Triglyceride (fat that is found in the blood) levels increased in males and decreased in females.
* High-density lipoprotein (HDL, the so-called “good” cholesterol) decreased in males and increased in females.
* Systolic blood pressure (the first number of the blood-pressure reading, which measures when the heart contracts) increased in both boys and girls, but more so in boys.
* Boys became more insulin-resistant than girls.
“By age 19, the boys were at greater cardiovascular risk,” said lead author Antoinette Moran, M.D., in a statement.
“This is particularly surprising because we usually think of body fat as associated with cardiovascular risk, and the increasing risk in boys happened at the time in normal development when they were gaining muscle mass and losing fat,” said Moran, professor and division chief of paediatric endocrinology and diabetes at the University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis.
The study was published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The study found no difference in cholesterol readings, or in low-density lipoprotein (LDL, so-called “bad” cholesterol) readings, between boys and girls.
At the beginning of the study, the boys and girls had similar body composition and blood pressure. During adolescence, both boys and girls gained weight. As puberty set in, body composition grew increasingly different, as boys became leaner and girls’ body fat increased.
It is common knowledge that heart-disease risk factors in adults include high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, abnormal cholesterol levels and insulin resistance.
The researchers concluded that more work needs to be done to investigate how the developmental processes during adolescence influence these heart-disease risk factors.
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