Investigating the Association of Total Cholesterol Level and Odds of Angina in Women over 40: a Cohort Study Using Data from the Framingham Heart Study

Objective To investigate the association between total cholesterol level and the odds of experiencing angina in women over the age of 40. Methods This retrospective cohort study was conducted using a subset of the cohort from the Framingham Heart Study to create a multivariable logistic regression model for analysis. Out of the 4,434 participants in the Framingham cohort, 2,148 participants were women over the age of 40 and included in this study. Results Of the participants who experienced angina (n=308) in this study, 62% had high cholesterol at the baseline. After controlling for age, women with high cholesterol had 2.03 (95% CI: 1.03-2.39, p=0.0002) higher odds of experiencing angina compared to participants with normal levels of cholesterol. Conclusions This study found that in women over the age of 40, the total cholesterol level is significantly associated with increased odds of experiencing angina. This study can be a steppingstone to further investigate the association in women through stratifying angina by type and cholesterol level by density