Heart attacks feel the same in men and women

Very few people associate nausea, cold sweat, and jaw pain with the heart, so doctors have often sent women with fatal heart disease home without the right treatment. Not until in recent years, scientists have discovered how differently men and women react to coronary thrombosis. Men typically feel severe pain in the chest, whereas women feel stomach pain, when a blood clot affects the blood vessels of the heart. Scientists explain the pain by the fact that a blood clot will typically be located in one of the heart’s large blood vessels in a man, affecting a major area and causing severe pain. In women, many small blood clots often block several small vessels, making the women suffer more diffuse symptoms. Cardiovascular disease research has primarily been carried out on men, and consequently, their symptoms are the most well-known.

New studies have shown that the hearts of the two sexes also age differently. Men develop a thicker muscle wall around the heart ventricles, but it looks as if women’s heart ventricles slowly shrink. In both cases, the heart loses part of its pumping power, but the two scenarios require different treatments. So, scientists have gone back to their labs to develop new drugs for women with heart trouble.