(NEW YORK) -- A new study shows that diabetes may be a bigger risk to heart health for women than for men.
The study, conducted by researchers at the Queensland Clinical Trials and Biostatistics Centre at the University of Queensland in Australia and published in the journal Diabetologia, found that the risk of heart disease brought on by diabetes is 40 to 50 percent higher in women than in men.
Researchers analyzed data from 858,507 individuals involved in 64 different studies conducted between 1966 and 2013. In analyzing the data, which included 28,203 "coronary heart disease events," researchers determined that women with diabetes were 44 percent more likely to suffer a heart attack than men with diabetes.
Researchers could not determine what caused the difference in heart risk for men and women diabetes patients, saying that future studies would be needed to determine whether treatment played a role or if there were other factors involved.
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