Stress Could Increase Heart Disease Risk In Younger Women.

2001 MAR 22- (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Reduced estrogen levels due to stress could put some young women on a high-risk course for heart disease.

Speaking on March 8, 2001, at the American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting, Jay Kaplan, PhD, professor of comparative medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, explained, "Observations of female monkeys show that stress during the years before menopause can lead to the early development of hardened arteries. Applied to women, this suggests that having an estrogen deficiency in the pre-menopausal years predicts a higher rate of heart disease after menopause."

Kaplan said that women have traditionally been considered "immune" from heart disease until after menopause, when their estrogen levels dramatically drop. His research showed that stress can actually reduce estrogen levels much earlier in life and cause the early development of hardened arteries that can lead to heart attacks and strokes. "This research demonstrates that stress can contribute to blood vessel disease, a long-standing hypothesis previously supported by little direct evidence," said Kaplan.

In the study, female monkeys were placed in groups so they would naturally establish a pecking order from dominant to subordinate. Monkeys that were socially stressed - because they were in subordinate roles in their group - produced reduced amounts of the hormone estrogen. In women, the estrogen produced before menopause helps protect against heart disease and osteoporosis.

Kaplan's results showed that the estrogen-deficient monkeys had four times more atherosclerosis than dominant monkeys that produced normal levels of estrogen. When the subordinate, or "stressed," monkeys received estrogen treatments either before ...