According to a study conducted by researchers at Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health and recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, psychosocial stress typically brought on by difficulty coping with challenging environments may combine to significantly increase the risk of coronary heart disease in women.
According to the study, women are particularly vulnerable to the detrimental impacts of social interactions and professional stress, which act as a potent one-two punch. Together, they raise the risk of coronary heart disease development by 21%. When a woman lacks the authority necessary to meet the duties and expectations of her profession, she experiences job strain.
A spouse’s death, divorce or separation, physical or verbal abuse, and social stress were all found to be independently connected with a 12% and 9% increased risk of coronary heart disease, respectively, in the study.
The Women’s Health Initiative Observational Study, which followed participants from 1991 to 2015, collected data from a nationally representative sample of 80,825 postmenopausal women, allowing the Drexel study to better understand how to prevent cancer, heart disease, and osteoporosis in females.
Our findings are a critical reminder to women, and those who care about them, that the threat of stress to human health should not go ignored. This is particularly pertinent during the stressors caused by a pandemic.
Conglong Wang
Researchers from Drexel analyzed the relationship between these different types of stress and coronary heart disease in the present follow-up study. They examined the impact of psychological stress from difficult life events, demanding work situations, and social pressure.
During the 14-year, seven-month trial, over 5% of the women experienced the onset of coronary heart disease. High-stress life events were linked to a 12% higher risk of coronary heart disease, and high social strain was linked to a 9% increased risk of coronary heart disease after adjusting for age, duration at a job, and socioeconomic characteristics. Work strain was not independently associated with coronary heart disease.
The most common cause of death in the US is coronary heart disease, which develops when the heart’s arteries narrow and are unable to supply enough oxygenated blood to the organ. The most recent research investigates how professional stress and social stress interact to increase the risk of disease, building on past studies relating psychosocial stress to coronary heart disease.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted ongoing stresses for women in balancing paid work and social stressors. We know from other studies that work strain may play a role in developing CHD, but now we can better pinpoint the combined impact of stress at work and at home on these poor health outcomes,” said senior author Yvonne Michael, ScD, SM, an associate professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health.
“My hope is that these findings are a call for better methods of monitoring stress in the workplace and remind us of the dual-burden working women face as a result of their unpaid work as caregivers at home.”
Future research, according to the study’s authors, should investigate the effects of gender-specific job demands and shift employment on coronary heart disease.
“Our findings are a critical reminder to women, and those who care about them, that the threat of stress to human health should not go ignored,” said lead author Conglong Wang, PhD, a recent Dornsife graduate who conducted the research while at Drexel. “This is particularly pertinent during the stressors caused by a pandemic.”
