A new study, published in PLOS One, examined a gene associated with stress responses and cardiovascular events.  The 5HTR2C gene is located on the X chromosome and it regulates physiological response to environmental stressors.  At that gene, there are two alleles: Cys23 and the minor Ser23.  Researchers found that carriers of Ser23 had a stronger and faster stress response.  Ser23 allele carriers are also more likely than Cys23 G allele carriers to express elevated levels of phenotypes associated with elevated cortisol levels, including central obesity, elevated glucose, insulin and insulin resistance, higher blood pressure and lipids, hypertension, type-2 diabetes, coronary heart disease.

According to an analysis of the study in BBC News, heart patients with the genetic change had a 38 percent higher risk of having a heart attack or dying from heart disease.  They found this increased risk in heart patients after seven years of follow up compared with those without, even after taking into account factors like age, obesity and smoking.  This genetic change led to poor response to stress and approximately 10 percent of men and 3 percent of women in the study had the gene.

Statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), indicate that 715,000 Americans have a heart attack each year.  Of these, 525,000 are a first attack and 190,000 have already had a heart attack before.  The CDC also interviewed Americans to identify if there was a lack of education on heart attacks.  Respondents knew that chest pain was a major symptom of a heart attack, but did not know that chest discomfort, other upper body pains, shortness of breath, nausea, lightheadedness, and cold sweats were also major symptoms that could signal a need to call 911.  With 47 percent of sudden cardiac deaths occurring outside of a hospital, the CDC concluded that many Americans do not know when it is time to seek emergency medical care.

WebMD reports that commonly known symptoms of a heart attack are squeezing chest pain, shortness of breath, and a crushing chest pain that radiates down one arm.  However, these are more often seen in male victims.  Females experience subtler or less obviously related symptoms, such as pain in seemingly unrelated areas including the back, neck, jaw, and stomach.  Women also experience a fatigued feeling, primarily in the chest, which makes simple physical exertion difficult.

NBC News states that sex-specific criteria in the early stages of a heart attack could help provide a quicker method for evaluating heart-attack symptoms in women could help to detect problems sooner, as well as reduce heart-attack misdiagnosis and death rates, both of which tend to be higher in women than in men.