A CT woman seemed too young for this disease. But it’s killing more young people

Hartford Courant – Wednesday, May 13, 2026
By Livi Stanford

Marissa Cullen knew something was amiss when she was walking through a store and felt as though she had run and couldn’t take a deep breath.

“It was terrifying,” Cullen said, remembering the experience in 2023.

Seeking answers, doctors performed an EKG, blood tests and other heart tests which all came back normal.

Cullen said doctors shrugged off her symptoms but she continued to seek answers. She felt unwell and remembered her sister, who had died of a sudden cardiac event at the age of 36 in 2020.

“I had to fight at the emergency room for them to continue testing because all of my numbers were quite normal,” Cullen said. “I didn’t have jaw pain. I didn’t have back pain. I didn’t have anything that was like, ‘Oh my God this is my heart.’”

After four days of advocating for more testing, doctors performed a stress test finding that Cullen had more than a 96% blockage in her coronary artery.

Cullen, a New Haven resident, was 45 years old in 2023 and needed what would become the first of two stents over a three-year period.

Local cardiologists say they seeing younger patients with cardiac problems in the state and that their symptoms should not be ignored.

A new study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found there is “underrecognized increasing risk among young adults with myocardial infarction (MI), particularly among women,” according to Dr. Celina Young, associate professor of medicine at Stanford University and associate editor of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

“The study also points to possible reasons for that increased risk that deserve more attention such as potential undertreatment,” said Young in an email.

The study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that “heart attack deaths were up among younger adults with women more likely than men to die after a first heart attack.”

Death rates rose by 1.2%, “among young adults younger than age 55, who were hospitalized between 2011 and 2022 with a first heart attack,” the American Heart Association said.

“In an analysis of nearly 1 million hospitalizations between 2011-2022 of U.S. adults ages 18-54, women had a higher rate of death in the hospital from a severe form of heart attack and from a less severe subtype compared to men,” the American Heart Association said in a release.

A cardiologist at Yale New Haven Health said the study is highlighting that “we need to pay attention and have our alerts on when young women come into the emergency room with chest pain or are having a heart attack.

“We need to better communicate that the symptoms need attention so as not to delay coming into the hospital,” said Dr Erica Spatz, a cardiologist at Yale New Haven Health. “And once they are in the hospital ensuring that women are listened to, that they are heard because as you can see in this data they’re at risk and they’re at risk even for dying.”

Dr. Mohan Satish, the study’s lead author and postdoctoral fellow at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City, said in a release that while U.S. heart attack deaths “appeared to have plateaued or decreased, based on observational studies that extended in 2010,” the decline is driven mainly by men and older adults.

“We often think heart attacks are mainly an older person’s problem, however, our findings indicate that younger adults, especially women, are at real risk,” Satish said.

Symptoms and signs women shouldn’t ignore

Spatz said that having a heart attack before the age of 55 for men or women is relatively uncommon but it’s not rare.

“For young women we see that when they come in with their heart attacks they’re more sick,” she said. “They have more risk factors and those risk factors are more prevalent among women.”

Risk factors include diabetes, which Spatz said increases the risk for heart attacks more in women than in men. She added that other non-traditional risk factors including low income, depression and stress, increase the chances of having a heart attack, which she said are more prevalent among women.

Spatz said the most common symptom of a heart attack in women is chest discomfort, pain/achiness in the arm or jaw and exertional shortness of breath.

She said it is essential for women to undergo screenings to understand their blood pressure, cholesterol and family history so they know their cardiovascular risk.

“So really starting early with good data, good information in partnership with their care providers is really important,” Spatz said.

If a woman has had a pregnancy that is complicated by high blood pressure, diabetes and preeclampsia, it is also important to speak with her doctor about cardiovascular health.

Potentially greater barriers

Researchers are pursuing a few directions for further investigation into what is causing the increase in heart attack deaths among younger adults, particularly women, Young said.

“Firstly, young women with heart attacks consistently received fewer cardiovascular procedures,” Young said. “We know definitively that stents to open up an acute coronary blockage are life-saving treatments, so undertreatment among women could certainly be contributing. But it’s not that simple. Undertreatment may be due to late recognition or underdiagnosis of MIs in women, especially since they often present with different symptoms than men.”

Young said women “may also present to the hospital less frequently or when it’s too late to intervene either because they don’t recognize the symptoms or they face greater barriers to coming to the hospital in a timely manner.”

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