Traditional risk factors across short-, intermediate-, and long-term follow-up in men and women

it is well established that traditional cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, such as total serum cholesterol and systolic blood pressure measured at baseline, are associated with CVD over long periods (ie, 30 years) of follow-up. In addition, multiple studies have compared the strength of the association between these traditional risk factors and CVD across different periods of short-, intermediate-, and long-term follow-up in men. Although some studies have found that the relative risk associated with smoking and diabetes in women is 2 to 3 times greater than that of men in the short term (≤10 years), little is known about the association of these risk factors with CVD outcomes in women across longer periods of follow-up (eg, 10-20 years or >20 years). ¹ We sought to shed light on this by comparing the strength of the association between traditional risk factors and CVD death in women and men across 3 distinct follow-up periods.