Recommendations for cardiovascular disease research with lesbian, gay and bisexual adults.

This is a critical review, not a test of a clinical intervention or a patient outcome trial. Most included studies were secondary analyses of population surveys, and only one was cross-sectional. Definitions for cardiovascular risk factors varied widely across studies, so results were hard to compare. Many studies relied on self-report or telephone surveys, which may underreport cardiovascular disease and introduce recall bias. No included study used medical records, and only seven used laboratory data. Cardiovascular diagnoses were often collapsed into one category, hiding differences between heart attack, stroke, and other diagnoses. The review excluded studies focused only on HIV/AIDS or transgender people and included only English-language studies.

Do not read this as proof that lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults have higher cardiovascular disease risk. The review found inconsistent measures, mostly self-report, and no medical records, so the included studies cannot reliably compare risk.