Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in women 55 years old and younger.

Cardiologists at St. John's are trying to learn more about the best way to discover and treat women with heart disease.

It's a study St. John's has partnered with Yale researchers and more than 100 other sites across the country to do.

The VIRGO study will compare 2,000 young women and 1,000 men who have had heart attacks.

Kathy Graham never used to take any medicine, but after a heart attack in November, her drawer is full of medicine to keep her well.

At 53, Kathy didn't think she was having a heart attack.

"I started getting pressure in my chest, and I just related it to being stressed, and then it went through to my back, and the pressure felt like it was getting tighter and tighter," Kathy said.

"There's always the perception that young women are relatively protected from heart disease, but actually that is not true. The numbers are pretty much up there with breast cancer," St. John’s cardiologist Dr. Lakshmi Parvathaneni said.

Kathy is one of about 40,000 women under 55 hospitalized each year for heart disease.

Now doctors are using her case in the VIRGO study.

"It does not involve any interventions or drugs. Basically this is to see how women do after heart attack and we'll study some factors that lead them to heart attacks," Dr. Parvathaneni said.

"What they can learn from taking just a small sample of blood can help other people," Kathy said.

Women and men are interviewed about things like their lifestyle, eating habits, and family history in the study.

"Couple things we've noticed is quite a few of the young women that come with heart attacks are smokers and lot of them have a lot of stress in their personal life," Dr. Parvathaneni said.

A smoker for thirty years, Kathy is now trying to quit.

She's also working on handling her stress better and eating more heart healthy foods.

"I'm learning to cook different," Kathy said.

She survived a heart attack once, and she doesn't want to risk having another one.

St. John's is still looking for women younger than 55 with heart disease to participate in the study.

Each year 40,000 women under 55 are hospitalized for heart disease and 8,000 die from the disease.