New research suggests divorce could increase heart attack risk in women.
The findings show women who have gone through two divorces are twice as likely to have a heart attack than those who are happily married, Duke University Medical Center reported. The risk of heart attack was found to remain even if the woman remarried.
"Divorce is a major stressor, and we have long known that people who are divorced suffer more health consequences," said Matthew Dupre, associate professor of medicine at Duke and the study's lead author. "But this is one of the first studies to look at the cumulative effect of divorce over a long period. We found that it can have a lasting imprint on people's health."
To make their findings the researchers looked at 15,827 people between the ages of 45 and 80 who had been married at least once in their lives. The participants were interviewed every two years between 1992 and 2010 about their health and marital status. About one-third of the study participants reported that they had been divorced at least once during the 18-year study.
Men tend to have a higher risk of heart attack in general, but divorce appears to have a stronger influence on women's heart health than men's. Men who had been divorced had the same risk of heart attack as those who were married, but risk to rise after two divorces. Unlike women, men who had been divorced multiple times and got remarried saw a reduction in heart attack risk.
The findings were published in a recent edition of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
