Glasgow women top for heart disease

WOMEN in Glasgow and Belfast top the international league for heart disease among females and suffer more heart attacks than men in some parts of southern Europe, a study by the World Health Organisation said, writes Liz Hunt.

The WHO study also found that among men, only Finns have a higher risk of heart attack than males living in Glasgow and Belfast.

The study, the biggest to date of heart attacks worldwide, confirms Britain has one of the worst records. Women in Glasgow and Belfast are nine and seven times more likely to have a heart attack than women from Catalonia, Spain, who have the lowest risk at 30 per 100,000.

Glaswegian men, with a rate of 823 per 100,000, and men in Belfast (781 per 100,000) come third and fourth highest. Men from Beijing are at the lowest risk, says the study published in Circulation, the American Heart Association journal.