According to a new study presented today at the European Stroke Organization (ESO) Conference, work-related stress, sleep disorders and fatigue, considered non-traditional risk factors for heart attack and stroke, are increasing more pronounced among women than among men .
The more workers, the more risk factors
The researchers compared data from 22,000 men and women in the Swiss Health Survey for 2007, 2012 and 2017 . The study thus identified an increase in the number of women who reported non-traditional risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The trend coincided with an increase in the number of women working full time from 38% in 2007 to 44% in 2017.
The study also found that men were more likely to smoke and be obese than women, but women reported a greater increase in non-traditional risk factors for heart attacks and strokes, such as job stress, sleep disorders and the feeling of tiredness and fatigue. This increase coincides with the number of women working full time .
As Susanne Wegener , Professor of Neurology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland explains:
We found an overall increase in non-traditional risk factors in both genders, but these were more pronounced in female participants, while most traditional cardiovascular risk factors remained stable. These results underscore the fact that there are sex differences for non-traditional CVD risk factors with an alarming trend towards a particular increase in women.