The prediction of the female population at risk of atherothromotic disease (ATD), such as heart attack or stroke, is not as easy as the prediction of males, but is still quite accurate.  The risk factors for ATD in men and women are the same, though the mix differs significantly.  Those risk factors are cigarette smoking, dyslipidemia, and hypertension.  I presented these data at the AAFP Snnual Scientific Symposium in Boston in the mid 1990's, at the Second International Conference on Heart Attack and Stroke in Women in 2005 in Orlando, and at the National Lipid Association symposium in Seattle in 2008.  Cigarette smoking is the #1 risk factor, precipitating ATD events in younger women.  Indeed, when I first started colleacting data, there was a 10-year gap between the onset of ATD in men and women.  Over time, as more men quit smoking and more women began smoking, that gap has narrowed and now the distributions nearly overlap.  Hence, the first step in preventing ATD in women is to get them to stop smoking, or better yet never start smoking.  Hypertension, on the other hand, is easy to detect and relatively easy to treat.  And then there is the matter of dyslipidemia.  I believe that a state of dyslipidemia exists whenever the balance between the pro-atherogenic lipids (mainly LDL) and the anti-atherogenic lipids (mainly HDL) is tipped in favor of cholesterol accumulation in the arterial intima.  This state is best seen with the use of lipid ratios, and I advocate the use of the Cholesterol Retention Fraction (CRF, or [LDL-HL]/LDL).  The CRF and systolic blood pressure (SBP) can be combined into a predictive graph, which has most recently been published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology, April issue, pages 136-137.  I will present the graph at the NLA symposium, along with it validation, in Chicago next month and would be delighted to discuss matters with any interested parties.