Divorce may be linked to a higher risk for heart attack, especially in women.
Researchers used a nationally representative sample of 15,827 adults ages 45 to 80, all of whom were married or had been previously. The study, published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, began in 1992, and the participants were interviewed every two years through 2010. About one-third of the people in the study were divorced at least once in their lives.
During the follow-up, 1,211 of the participants — about 8 percent — had a heart attack. After controlling for age, race and ethnicity, obesity, hypertension, smoking, alcohol consumption and other health and lifestyle factors, the researchers found that compared with a woman who was continuously married, a woman who had been divorced once had a 24 percent increased risk of heart attack. Those who had been divorced twice had a 77 percent increased risk, and remarried a 35 percent increased risk.
In men, only those who had divorced more than once had an increased risk of about 30 percent. Men who stayed married or who remarried had no increased risk.
“Divorce isn’t a classical risk factor, like smoking or high blood pressure,” said the lead author, Matthew E. Dupre, an associate professor of sociology at Duke. “But we hope that caretakers and the general public will have a greater understanding of how the stress of divorce can affect their lives.”
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