<p class="title">Marriage can help protect people from heart diseases or strokes, as well as reduce the risk of death from these conditions, a study claims.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Published in the journal Heart, the study is the largest to date, with the age and ethnicity of the participants strengthening the wider applicability of the findings, researchers said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Previous research on the impact of marital status have yielded somewhat mixed results. In a bid to clarify the issues, scientists trawled research databases for relevant published studies.</p>.<p class="bodytext">About 80 per cent of cardiovascular diseases can be attributed to well-known risk factors like age, sex, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and diabetes. However, it is not clear what influences the remaining 20 per cent.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Researchers from Keele University in the UK drew on past research that involved more than 2 million people aged between 42 and 77 from Europe, Scandinavia, North America, the Middle East, and Asia.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Pooled analysis of the data revealed that those who were widowed, divorced or never married were at heightened risk of developing cardiovascular disease and coronary artery heart disease.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Not being married was also associated with a heightened risk of dying from both coronary heart disease and stroke.</p>.<p class="bodytext">When the data was further broken down, the analysis showed that divorce was associated with a 35 per cent higher risk of developing heart disease for both men and women, while widowers of both sexes were 16 per cent more likely to have a stroke.</p>.<p class="bodytext">While there was no difference in the risk of death following a stroke between the married and the unmarried, this was not the case after a heart attack, the risk of which was significantly higher, around 42 per cent, among those who had never married.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Researchers cautioned that the methods used and adjustments made for potentially influential factors varied considerably across all the studies, which may have affected the results of their analysis.</p>.<p class="bodytext">There was no information on same-sex partnerships or the quality of marriage. The potential role of living with someone, as opposed to being married to them, was not explored either.</p>.<p class="bodytext">There are various theories as to why marriage may be protective, researchers said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">These include earlier recognition of, and response to, health problems; better adherence to medication, better financial security, enhanced wellbeing, and better friendship networks.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Future research should focus around whether marital status is a surrogate marker for other adverse health behaviour or cardiovascular risk profiles that underlies our reported findings or whether marital status should be considered as a risk factor by itself," researchers said.</p>
<p class="title">Marriage can help protect people from heart diseases or strokes, as well as reduce the risk of death from these conditions, a study claims.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Published in the journal Heart, the study is the largest to date, with the age and ethnicity of the participants strengthening the wider applicability of the findings, researchers said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Previous research on the impact of marital status have yielded somewhat mixed results. In a bid to clarify the issues, scientists trawled research databases for relevant published studies.</p>.<p class="bodytext">About 80 per cent of cardiovascular diseases can be attributed to well-known risk factors like age, sex, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and diabetes. However, it is not clear what influences the remaining 20 per cent.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Researchers from Keele University in the UK drew on past research that involved more than 2 million people aged between 42 and 77 from Europe, Scandinavia, North America, the Middle East, and Asia.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Pooled analysis of the data revealed that those who were widowed, divorced or never married were at heightened risk of developing cardiovascular disease and coronary artery heart disease.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Not being married was also associated with a heightened risk of dying from both coronary heart disease and stroke.</p>.<p class="bodytext">When the data was further broken down, the analysis showed that divorce was associated with a 35 per cent higher risk of developing heart disease for both men and women, while widowers of both sexes were 16 per cent more likely to have a stroke.</p>.<p class="bodytext">While there was no difference in the risk of death following a stroke between the married and the unmarried, this was not the case after a heart attack, the risk of which was significantly higher, around 42 per cent, among those who had never married.</p>.<p class="bodytext">Researchers cautioned that the methods used and adjustments made for potentially influential factors varied considerably across all the studies, which may have affected the results of their analysis.</p>.<p class="bodytext">There was no information on same-sex partnerships or the quality of marriage. The potential role of living with someone, as opposed to being married to them, was not explored either.</p>.<p class="bodytext">There are various theories as to why marriage may be protective, researchers said.</p>.<p class="bodytext">These include earlier recognition of, and response to, health problems; better adherence to medication, better financial security, enhanced wellbeing, and better friendship networks.</p>.<p class="bodytext">"Future research should focus around whether marital status is a surrogate marker for other adverse health behaviour or cardiovascular risk profiles that underlies our reported findings or whether marital status should be considered as a risk factor by itself," researchers said.</p>