Gender Bias Much? Why High Blood Pressure Is Often Misdiagnosed in Women

Back in Victorian times, "female hysteria" was the common diagnosis for everything from anxiety, insomnia, or sexual desire. You would think we were far past that kind of knuckle-dragging attitude, but apparently not. A new report from the European Society of Cardiology says that high blood pressure in women is too often dismissed as stress or menopause-related.

“High blood pressure is called hypertension in men but in women it is often mistakenly labelled as ‘stress’ or ‘menopausal symptoms’,” said author Professor Angela Maas, director of the Women’s Cardiac Health Program, Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands. “We know that blood pressure is treated less well in women compared to men, putting them at risk for atrial fibrillation, heart failure and stroke–which could have been avoided.”