Background

Much of what we know today about cardiovascular disease and the treatment of such diseases is based on knowledge from studies in which men have been participants. However, the risk factors for cardiovascular disease are not exactly the same for women and men. This means that the current prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease may be less effective for women than for men, and many of the women who die from heart attacks have not received any form of preventive treatment beforehand.

We urgently need distinct strategies to tackle gender inequality in awareness, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. In CorFemina, we will combine our unique access to large-scaled digitalized health data and comprehensive biobanks with the most recent methods in biotechnology and machine learning to identify biomarkers, risk factors and molecular mechanisms triggering cardiovascular disease in women. We aim to use this data to develop a risk prediction algorithm for women and to identify molecular mechanisms that are specific for woman and could possibly lead the way to new drugs and new treatment strategies for both genders.

Personal awareness of cardiovascular risk is the first step towards successful preventive measures. Therefore, we will also explore the current awareness of cardiovascular disease in women and the attention to preventive measures in the primary care setting.