Among post-menopausal women, a higher testosterone/estradiol ratio was associated with an elevated risk for incident CVD, CHD, and HF events, higher levels of testosterone associated with increased CVD and CHD, whereas higher estradiol levels were associated with a lower CHD risk. Sex hormone levels after menopause are associated with women's increased CVD risk later in life.

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A more androgenic profile (higher free testosterone and lower SHBG levels) is associated with a greater increase in LVM in men and women and greater increase in M:V ratio in women over the course of 9 years.

Rationale: Marked socioeconomic health-care disparities are recognized in India, but lung health inequalities between urban and rural children have not been studied.Objectives: We investigated whether differences exist in spirometric pulmonary function in healthy children across the Indian urban-rural continuum and compared results with those from Indian children living in the UK.Methods: Indian children aged 5 to 12 years were recruited from Indian urban, semiurban, and rural schools, and as part of the Size and Lung Function in Children study, London. Anthropometric and spirometric assessments were undertaken.Measurements and Main Results: Acceptable spirometric data were obtained from 728 (58% boys) children in India and 311 (50% boys) UK-Indian children. As an entire group, the India-resident children had significantly lower z FEV 1 and z FVC than UK-Indian children (P , 0.0005), when expressed using Global Lung FunctionInitiative-2012 equations. However, when India-resident children were categorized according to residence, there were no differences in z FEV 1 and z FVC between Indian-urban and UK-Indian children. There were, however, significant reductions of z0.5 z scores and 0.9 z scores in both FEV 1 and FVC (with no difference in FEV 1 /FVC) in Indian-semiurban and Indian-rural children, respectively, when compared with Indian-urban children (P , 0.0005). z Body mass index, socioeconomic circumstances, tobacco, and biomass exposure were individually significantly associated with z FEV 1 and z FVC (P , 0.0005). Conclusions:The presence of an urban-rural continuum of lung function within a specific ethnic group emphasizes the impact of environmental factors on lung growth in emerging nations such as India, which must be taken into account when developing ethnic-specific reference values or designing studies to optimize lung health.