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If you're a woman going through menopause and you're younger than 46 a new study shows that you are twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke as women who hit menopause later.

Melissa Wellons, the lead author of the study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said these are women who should keep in mind that they are at increased risk.

 "My advice to them would be to get your traditional risk factors checked... and do the things that we know, based on evidence, can improve your risk of developing heart disease, like keep your cholesterol in check and keep your blood pressure in check," Wellons told Reuters Health.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death among U.S. women. Combined with strokes, it is responsible for almost one in three deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers used surveys to collect health information from 331 Chinese, 641 black and 550 Hispanic women - a total of 2,509.

Of the participants, 28 percent experienced menopause before age 46. In the United States, on average, a woman goes through menopause at age 51.

None of the women had cardiovascular disease at the beginning of the five yearlong study and they were tracked to see who ended up having a heart attack or stroke.

The study, published in the journal Menopause, found 23 of the women who had gone through menopause early, and 27 who hadn't, suffered a heart attack or cardiac arrest or died from heart disease. Eighteen women who went through menopause early had a stroke during the study, compared to 19 (one percent) of women who hit menopause later.

Researchers are not clear about why early menopause might be linked to cardiovascular disease.

"It could be a genetic association, (where) genes that are related to ovarian function may also be associated with cardiovascular disease, and those two things are related but not through a common causal pathway," Wellons said.

Wellons also said more research is needed before doctors can know how to intervene to try to reduce the higher heart disease risk among women with early menopause.