Differences Between the Sexes on Cholesterol?

For a long time, medical studies didn’t include women because researchers were afraid that their menstrual cycle would skew results or that the subjects would become pregnant and have to stop taking a medication. Younger women were also less likely to have heart disease, which meant more participants would have to be included to be able to show a difference in outcomes if women were involved. More study subjects means more money to do the study, so leaving women out was a practical decision that wasn’t as sexist as it sometimes appears.
Fortunately, once the benefit of a particular therapy was shown in men, the economics made it favorable to study women as well, and later studies have shown that women benefit just as much as men do from cholesterol-lowering interventions, whenever the risk is equivalent. By the time women are in their midsixties, their risk of new coronary events is similar to that of similarly aged men, so there should be little difference in treatment at that point. In younger, premenopausal women, the risk for heart disease is less than that of men, so fewer women in this age group require treatment. However, when all risk factors are taken into account, men and women of equivalent risk for heart disease get treated to the same LDL target goals.