Cardiovascular research turns to women’s health

February, aside from being Black History Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month, is also Heart Disease Awareness Month. Open any fashion or gossip magazine in the beginning of February and you will see oodles of celebrities dressed in elegant red dresses, promoting heart disease awareness.

But between New York and Los Angeles, in a less glitzy but equally powerful show of support, the Center for Women's Health Research at Anschutz Medical Campus continues to march on in its fight against cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and the misdiagnoses that occur when women are not recognized as having different symptoms from men. Until 20 years ago, men were the only group researched in cardiovascular medicine.

Co-founders Dr. Judith Regensteiner and Dr. Joann Lindenfeld established the center based on a mutual progressive medical model.

"Our goal is to transform women's health," Regensteiner said. "We are engaged in all three parts of our mission, and we are doing well in all of them."

Patricia Sterner, the interim managing director for the center, explained the three parts of the mission and how each section applies in practice.

"First, we are focused on research," she said. "Second, we mentor junior faculty and junior scientists to build careers in women's research, and we also participate in community education and outreach."

Sterner went on to explain the importance of the community outreach program.

"This is a relatively new thing that we do, but we had a seventh annual luncheon with about 700 people attending," she said.

"We are looking forward to adding a couple symposia, and we are also looking to work with some community organizations to help spread information."

According to Sterner, the community outreach component of the center is one of its defining characteristics.

"A very unique part of what we do is engage the community," she said. "We have an advisory board that raises dollars and promotes the center to the community, and this is very distinctive."

Aside from the community education aspect of the center's mission, Sterner notes that mentoring is another boon to the program.

"The center raises private philanthropic dollars to support the mentoring component," she said. "This is very rare, and provides a great opportunity for our junior faculty."

The two diseases the center focuses on, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, are important to research in a gender scope because of the differences in the way the diseases present themselves and the manner in which they are connected.

"Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women," said Sterner. "Diabetes is number five on the list. That alone is a compelling reason to focus on research in these areas. Less than 20 years ago, women-only protocols in heart trials were not actually allowed by the FDA, so it has only been recently that the difference in diagnostics between women and men has been researched."

women differ from men in their presentation of symptoms during a heart attack. For example, a woman is more likely to feel discomfort in her jaw, vomit, or experience back pain during a heart attack than a male—and this type of differentiation can cause death if the medical community is not aware of the differences.

Regensteiner echoed Sterner in her opinion of the importance of researching cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and added that there is a connective aspect between them.

"Women with diabetes (Type II; adults) have worse consequences of the disease," she said. "Women have more heart attacks when they have diabetes—this may be because estrogen, which protects younger women from cardiovascular disease, is at a lower level in women with diabetes."

Regensteiner also said that women who have diabetes suffer more than just an increased chance of cardiovascular disease.

"More women have heart attacks and more women die from heart attacks, when those women have diabetes," she said.

The research center is not only accomplishing its lofty goals of mentoring, research, and community outreach, it is moving forward at a progressive rate.

"We are doing a lot of mentoring, we are educating more women, and we are doing very well with fundraising," said Regensteiner. "We want to keep expanding in our three goals."

The faculty and staff at the Center for Women's Health Research may not hit the red carpet in matching dresses, but they continuously focus on solutions and support for women suffering from heart disease and diabetes.