Women's marital bliss linked to CAD events: stressful marriage triples risk.(Clinical Rounds)

WAIKOLOA, HAWAII -- Women with highly stressful marriages had three times the risk of recurrent coronary disease events and measurable atherosclerosis progression on coronary angiography. Happily married women appeared to be protected from worsening heart disease over the course of a major Swedish study presented at a meeting sponsored by the International College of Psychosomatic Medicine.

Dr. Kristina Orth-Gomer of the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm said her study raises intriguing questions about the physiologic toll of pressures on modern women to be superhuman--managing marriage, motherhood, and full-time careers.

She and her associates studied 293 women aged 65 or younger who were hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction or unstable angina pectoris, matching them with an equal number of women aged 65 or younger drawn from the Swedish census registry.

Only two women in the entire cohort described themselves as housewives; all others worked outside the home, allowing for a study of both work and marital stress.

Women in the study who voiced high levels of work stress and marital stress had the greatest chance of recurrent cardiac events within 5 years: Those with severe marital problems on the Stockholm Marital Stress Scale had a poorer chance of survival than those with mild marital distress.

"Prospectively at a 5-year follow-up, marital stress was associated with a three times increased risk of recurrent events, whereas women who had both (marital and job stress) had the highest risk," she reported.

The researchers also found that increasing marital stress correlated with an increasing number of depressive symptoms. Job stress had no statistical link to depressive symptoms.