Marriage Woes Increase Heart Risk
C H I C A G O, Dec. 19 -- Common sense says a badmarriage can lead to heartbreak. Swedish researchers saidtoday that women with heart disease who are in a stressful relationship triple their risk of recurrent heart trouble.
While a stressful job has been found to aggravate men’sheart problems, doctors at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institutesaid the determining factor for women with heart trouble is thestresses in their relationship and not stress at work.
“Among women who were married or cohabiting with a malepartner, marital stress was associated with a 2.9-foldincreased risk of recurrent events after adjustment for age,estrogen status, education level, smoking” and other factors,wrote study author Kristina Orth-Gomer.
“In contrast to the findings for marital stress, there wasno statistical evidence of work stress effect on recurrentcoronary events for either cohabiting women or those livingalone,” she wrote in a report in this week’s Journal of theAmerican Medical Association.
No Company Better Than Bad Company
Of the 292 women aged 30 to 65 participating in the study,187 had heart disease. A total of 52 women either died of heartdisease, had a heart attack, underwent some type of procedureto relieve vascular trouble, or had some combination of theseduring the five-year follow-up period.
Below the age of 70, women in general have a worseprognosis than men after suffering a heart attack, though thecauses for the disparity is poorly understood, the researcherssaid. The study suggested that women living alone without apartner fared better than those in a bad relationship.
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