Highlight of meeting presentations include the following:
Other presentations focused on cholesterol trafficking; recent cardiovascular clinical trials focusing on women and areas needing more research; sex differences in heart failure in older adults; and the effects of exercise on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a severe genetic heart disease that is the leading cause of sudden death in young athletes and is more common in women than men. Sue Ann Thompson, president of the Wisconsin Women's Health Foundation, opened the meeting as a special guest speaker.
The scientific meeting was held as a satellite symposium of the International Society for Heart Research's annual meeting. The Society is sponsoring regional Scientific Advisory Meetings in response to the April 2001 Institute of Medicine report, "Exploring the Biological Contributions to Human Health: Does Sex Matter?" that validated the Society's message that biologic sex matters when it comes to health. Meetings are being held across the country to educate scientists, health care providers and the public about important sex-based biological differences relating to a variety of diseases and developmental processes.