Women With Higher Education Have Less Risk Of Heart Disease.(Brief Article)

2001 DEC 13 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Women with college or advanced degrees may have a lower risk of heart disease than less-educated women, according to a new study.

The study, published in the November/December 2001 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, shows that higher educational attainment, as a marker for socioeconomic status, is associated with less calcification of the arteries, suggesting that better-educated women have less risk of developing heart disease.

Although previous studies have linked education level and heart disease, this is among the first to use a high-resolution imaging technique to measure an early sign of impending heart disease in women without symptoms, says Linda C. Gallo, PhD, of the San Diego State University/University of California, San Diego joint doctoral program in clinical psychology.

"All participants were asymptomatic for coronary disease, and these findings therefore add to a growing number of studies suggesting that the effects of [socioeconomic status] emerge very early in the atherosclerotic process," she says.

Biological, behavioral and psychosocial risk factors for heart disease have been shown to be more common among less-educated women than among educated women. Although adjusting for these risk factors diminishes the effect of education on calcification somewhat, the effect remained.

"The results from previous research and from the current study suggest that established risk factors may contribute to the association between SES and coronary disease, but they do not completely ...