Women have a higher risk of venous thromboembolism than men

A research team analyzed 180,034 people with diabetes and found that women had a higher risk of venous thromboembolism than men, especially during
perimenopause.
In total, a large amount of data
on about 45 million hospitalizations and 7239710 patients in Austria between 2003 and 2014 were studied.

Elma Dervic of the Center for Complexity Science explains: "Our analysis shows for the first time that the association of diabetes with venous thromboembolism (VTE) may be greater
in women than in men.
" Women with diabetes mellitus (DM) had a 1.
52-fold risk of venous thromboembolism than women without diabetes, compared to a 1.
3-fold
risk for men.

"Especially after the age of 40, the relative risk of venous thromboembolism increases
.
"

Around 45 million figures come from Austria

To determine the sex-specific effect of diabetes on venous thromboembolism risk, the team examined population-based datasets
.
"There are about 45 million data records covering all hospitalizations in Austria from 2003 to 2014," Dervic said
.
Of the 180,034 patients with diabetes, 70,739 were women and 109,295 men
.

Diabetes mellitus: known risk factor for venous thromboembolism

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) includes two clinical manifestations: deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, which is a dangerous complication of
thrombosis.
Deischinger explains: "Typically, the risk of developing venous thromboembolism (VTE) is the same
in both sexes.
" Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects more than 8% of the world's population and is known to be a risk factor
for venous thromboembolism.
"In our study, we again found that people with diabetes had a 1.
4-fold higher risk of venous thromboembolism than controls without diabetes," Dervic said
.

Gender differences in medicine

The difference lies in the gender aspect
.
While traditional treatments rarely take into account gender differences in many diseases, "thanks to a lot of research work and big data analysis, we already know a lot more about this today," Dervic said
.
Therefore, these differences can be analyzed in detail and the treatment
method adjusted accordingly.
This study follows two other studies that looked at sex differences in depression expression in people with diabetes and sex differences
in depression expression in Parkinson's patients.
Here, too, significant sex-specific differences
were found.

An important step towards prevention

"Our findings suggest that women with diabetes should be more carefully monitored for the development of venous thromboembolism, especially in their perimenopausal period," emphasizes Alexandra Kautzky-Willer of the Medical University of Vienna, the study's last author
.
This again suggests that women's physiological advantages – especially in terms of vascular complications of diabetes – are diminishing, and that as estrogen levels decline during menopause, women's risk increases further
.
All the more reason is to intensively treat
all risk factors at a younger age.

To be able to document this sex-specific correlation between diabetes mellitus and venous thromboembolism in more detail, analysis is needed to investigate the reasons for
the relative increased risk.
"This will be an important step in preventing venous thromboembolism in diabetics, especially if the patient is a woman
," Dervic said.
Department, which may affect the work
covered in this article.