Sudden Cardiac Death Risk Higher in Males Than Females

Sudden cardiac death claims thousands of lives each year. It mostly occurs in people with no prior symptoms of cardiovascular disease.

Men are more susceptible to sudden cardiac death than women, where about one in nine men compared to one in 30 women are at risk of experiencing it.

Sudden cardiac death claims thousands of lives each year. It mostly occurs in people with no prior symptoms of cardiovascular disease. "Sudden cardiac death has been very hard to study because most patients had no history of heart problems and were not being monitored at the time of their death," said Donald Lloyd-Jones from Northwestern University in the US.

Getting to the Heart of Sudden Cardiac Death
A multidisciplinary team of Johns Hopkins researchers has tracked an elusive creature, a complex of proteins thought to be at fault in some cases of sudden cardiac death.

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Nearly one in every nine men and about one in 30 women are at risk of experiencing sudden cardiac death, most before the age 70.

The findings showed that sudden cardiac death risk was greater for men than women -- with an overall 10.9 percent lifetime risk among all men at age 45 (roughly one in nine men) and a 2.8 percent lifetime risk of among all women at age 45 (or about one in 30 women).

Men with two or more major risk factors at all ages had even higher lifetime risks for of at least 12 percent (or more than one in eight men). High blood pressure levels helped identify lifetime risk more accurately in both men and women than any other single risk factor.

"Our paper sets the stage for thinking about how we can screen the population effectively to find out who's at risk," Lloyd-Jones said.

Heart Structural Gene Causes Sudden Cardiac Death
The presence or absence of the CAP2 gene is directly responsible for cardiac conduction disease in mice, causing sudden cardiac death.

For the study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the team examined long-term data on more than 5,200 men and women aged 28-62.

Focusing on four major risk factors -- blood pressure, total cholesterol, smoking, and diabetes - the researchers calculated overall cumulative lifetime risk estimates for sudden cardiac death, and estimates according to risk factor burden. During follow up, 375 people died of sudden cardiac arrest.

Fluctuations in Body Temperature can Trigger Sudden Cardiac Death
When the normal body temperature changes, the affected protein that sends electrical signal for muscle contraction in the heart no longer functions normally.

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Risk of Sudden Cardiac Death Tied to Protein Overproduction
Johns Hopkins scientists report that a genetic variant linked to sudden cardiac death leads to protein overproduction in heart cells.