HSA 535 Assignment 2 Cohort Follow-up Studies Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)

Introduction

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has long been considered a disorder which principally affects men in our society; consideration of the occurrence of heart attacks in females, for example, has been largely an afterthought. In the past few years, however, it has become increasingly obvious that this is not a problem limited to males, but that it occurs with great frequency in women. We now know that CVD is the cause of death more than any condition in women over the age of 50, including cancer (1) and in fact is responsible for more than a third of all deaths in women (2). It is estimated that 370,000 women in the United States die from heart disease each year.

However, our knowledge base regarding CVD in...