In a nationwide study, men were more likely to experience sudden cardiac death than women across all age groups, researchers reported in Heart.

The researchers analyzed all 54,028 reported deaths in Denmark in 2010 and identified 6,867 cases of sudden cardiac death.

Among those who experienced sudden cardiac death, 56% were men and 44% were women, Tobias Skjelbred, MD, internist and PhD student in the department of cardiology at the Heart Centre Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues wrote.

The incidence rates of sudden cardiac death increased with older age, and were higher in men than in women in all age groups, according to the researchers.

The average age at sudden cardiac death was 71 years in men and 79 years in women (P < .01), the researchers wrote.

The age range with the greatest gap between the sexes in sudden cardiac death incidence was 35 to 50 years (incidence rate ratio = 3.7; 95% CI, 2.8-4.8), Skjelbred and colleagues wrote.

Among those who experienced sudden cardiac death, men were more likely than women to have CVD (P < .01), the researchers wrote, noting that men were more likely than women to have the following specific conditions: diabetes, CAD, acute MI, congestive HF, cardiac arrhythmia, ventricular arrhythmia, peripheral arteries, kidney disease and cancer (P < .01 for all).

However, women were more likely than men to have had cerebrovascular disease (P = .03) and connective tissue disease (P < .01), they wrote.

“The lower cardiovascular mortality among young and middle-aged female patients has been described by the protective effects of estrogen on both vascular tonus and development of atherosclerosis before menopause,” Skjelbred and colleagues wrote. “It follows that the diminishing protective effect of estrogen in postmenopausal female patients could explain why sudden cardiac death incidence rates among female patients increase later in life compared with their male counterparts.”