Barinas-Mitchell E, Duan C, Brooks M, et al. - Using a multi-ethnic cohort, researchers investigated the extent to which racial/ethnic disparities in subclinical vascular disease in late midlife women could be explained by cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors across the menopause. Participants were selected from the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation and were 1,357 in total with mean age 60 years and without clinical CVD. Among black and Hispanic women vs white and Chinese women, generally less favorable were early to late midlife time-averaged cumulative burden of conventional CVD risk factors estimated employing serial measures from baseline to the ultrasound visit, including education and smoking status and time-averaged cumulative blood pressure, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and fasting insulin. Independent of these risk factors, BMI, and medications, a thicker common carotid artery intima-media thickness was detected in black women, wider interadventitial diameter was identified in Chinese women, yet there was a lower plaque presence in black and Hispanic women vs white women. According to the findings, the link between traditional CVD risk factors measured across the menopause transition and late midlife subclinical vascular disease was not particularly moderated by race/ethnicity. A possible role of unmeasured socioeconomic, cultural, and nontraditional biological risk factors was suggested in racial/ethnic disparities in vascular health.