title: Gender differences in recurrent coronary events; the FINMONICA MI register.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Male gender is an established risk factor for first myocardial infarction, but some studies have suggested that among myocardial infarction survivors, women fare worse than men. Therefore, we examined the long-term prognosis of incident myocardial infarction survivors in a large, population-based MI register, addressing gender differences in mortality as well as the number of events and time intervals between recurrent events.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Study subjects included 4900 men and women, aged 25-64 years, with definite or probable first myocardial infarctions who were alive 28 days after the onset of symptoms. At first myocardial infarction, women were older and more likely to be hypertensive or diabetic than men, and had a greater proportion of probable vs definite events. After adjustment for age and geographic region, men had 1.74 times the risk of fatal coronary heart disease relative to women (hazard ratio=1.63 and 1.55 for cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality, respectively) over an average of 5.9 years of follow-up. Number and time intervals between any recurrent event--fatal and non-fatal--did not differ by gender.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These data suggest that men are far more likely to have a fatal recurrent event than women despite comparable numbers of events.
authors.affiliation: Division of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, U.S.A.
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Schreiner
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Niemelä
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Miettinen
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mähönen
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ketonen
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Immonen-Räihä
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lehto
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vuorenmaa
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Palomäki
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mustaniemi
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kaarsalo
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arstila
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Torppa
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Puska
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tuomilehto
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pyörälä
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Salomaa
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000401:mortality*; D011379:Prognosis; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012008:Recurrence; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012737:Sex Factors; D017741:Survivors