Heart Attack Risk High in Divorced Women, Even After Remarrying

Heart Attack Risk High in Divorced Women, Even After Remarrying
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2/13/2016
Updated:
2/14/2016

Divorced women suffer heart attacks at higher rates than women who are continuously married, a new study from Duke Medicine has found. A woman who has been through two or more divorces is nearly twice as likely to have a heart attack when compared to her stably married female peers, according to the findings.

Even among women who remarry after the stress of divorce, their heart attack risk remains elevated, according to the study published in “Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes,” a journal of the American Heart Association.

“Divorce is a major stressor, and we have long known that people who are divorced suffer more health consequences,” said Matthew Dupre, Ph.D., 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.”

The findings were based on the responses of a nationally representative group of 15,827 people ages 45 to 80 who had been married at least once. Participants were interviewed every two years from 1992 to 2010 about their marital status and health. About one-third of participants had been divorced at least once during the 18-year study.

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From Duke University via  Newswise

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