New study finds hidden causes of heart attacks that are often overlooked or misdiagnosed

Heart attacks don’t always look the same — and a new study from Mayo Clinic highlights the key differences between how they affect men and women.

The most common cause of heart attacks overall is clogged arteries (atherosclerosis), but in people under 65 — particularly women — there are often other factors at play.

Atherosclerosis is responsible for 75% of men’s heart attacks, but only 47% of women’s cardiac events, data shows.

In the study, which was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers analyzed more than 15 years of data on 1,474 heart attacks.

They found that more than half of heart attacks in women under age 65 were caused by “nontraditional factors.”

Those included embolisms and spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD), among other fa