Females are seven to nine times more likely to suffer "broken heart syndrome," when sudden or prolonged stress like an emotional breakup or death causes overwhelming heart failure or heart attack-like symptoms, the first nationwide study of this finds. Usually patients recover with no lasting damage.....
Japanese doctors first recognized this syndrome around 1990 and named it Takotsubo cardiomyopathy; tako tsubo are octopus traps that resemble the unusual pot-like shape of the stricken heart.
It happens when a big shock, even a good one like winning the lottery, triggers a rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones that cause the heart's main pumping chamber (Left ventricle).
Dr. Abhishek Deshmukh of the University of Arkansas reported study results Wednesday at an American Heart Association conference in Florida. Using a federal database with about 1,000 hospitals, Dr. Deshmukh found 6,229 cases in 2007. Only 671 involved men. After adjusting for high blood pressure, smoking and other factors that can affect heart problems, women seemed 7.5 times more likely to suffer the syndrome than men. It was three times more common in women over 55 than in younger women. And women younger than 55 were 9.5 times more likely to suffer it than men of that age....
One theory is that hormones play a role. Another is that men have more adrenaline receptors on cells in their hearts than women do, "so maybe men are able to handle stress better" and the chemical surge it releases, Deshmukh said.
About 1 percent of such cases prove fatal, the new study shows. About 10 percent of victims will have a second episode sometime in their lives. And although heart attacks happen more in winter, broken heart syndrome is more common in summer.
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