Heart Attack, Stroke-Prone Arteries More Common in Nasty People

Aug. 17, 2010— -- People with antagonistic or disagreeable personalities have thicker arterial walls that may make them more prone to heart attacks and strokes, researchers said.

The carotid artery lining was significantly thicker in people who rated low on a scale of agreeableness, reported Angelina Sutin of the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues.

In a study of 5,614 residents of the Italian island of Sardinia, those ranking in the lowest 10 percent of agreeableness were 1.4 times as likely to have thickening in their lining of their carotid artery, the researchers found. This held true even after the researchers adjusted for cholesterol levels, smoking status and other risk factors.

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The researchers also found that an antagonistic personality predicted increased thickening over approximately three years of follow-up.

"Antagonistic individuals, especially those who are manipulative and aggressive, have greater increases in arterial thickening, independent of traditional cardiovascular risk factors," Sutin and colleagues wrote in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.

The effect of personality appeared to be greater in women than in men, the researchers found. The carotid artery lining thickness in women with disagreeable personalities was similar to the average in men, who normally have significantly thicker arterial walls.

Previous studies have linked cardiovascular disease with certain personality types, notably the hard-charging "Type A" personality. Subsequent research showed that hostility was a major contributor to these findings, Sutin and colleagues reported.

They also cited some earlier studies linking various antisocial behavior patterns to arterial thickening. But these focused on specific populations, including poor young adults, women transitioning to menopause and men with untreated high blood pressure.

"Large, population-based samples are needed to test whether these associations hold across different demographic groups," Sutin and colleagues wrote.