Cardiovascular risk factors are differently associated with urinary albumin excretion in men and women.

Cardiovascular morbidity and mortality is not equally distributed among genders, men being more affected than women. It is not clear whether this is only related to a higher prevalence of the cardiovascular risk factors or to a similar prevalence of the risk factors as in women but a greater vascular susceptibility to these risk factors in men. This was tested by studying the association between various cardiovascular risk factors and urinary albumin excretion (UAE) in a large cohort of male and female subjects. While the prevalence of smoking and hypercholesterolemia was comparable between the genders, obesity was more common in women, and diabetes and hypertension were more frequent in men. The prevalence of microalbuminuria was about twofold higher in men. Interestingly, for a given level of any risk factor, UAE was higher in men than in women. On multivariate analysis with UAE as the dependent variable, an interaction with gender was found for the risk factors age, body mass index, and plasma glucose. Thus, for a higher age, body mass index, and glucose, the UAE is significantly increased in men when compared with women. It is concluded that gender differences exist in the association between cardiovascular risk factors and UAE. This is consistent with a larger vascular susceptibility to these risk factors in men as compared with women.