Women more likely to have ‘broken-heart syndrome’

Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla.

A woman’s heart breaks more easily than a man’s.

Females are seven to nine times more likely to suffer “broken-heart syndrome,” when sudden or prolonged stress such as an emotional breakup or death causes overwhelming heart failure or heart-attacklike 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 potlike shape of the stricken heart.

It happens when a big shock, even a good one such as winning the lottery, triggers a rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones that cause the heart’s main pumping chamber to balloon suddenly and not work right. Tests show dramatic changes in rhythm and blood substances typical of a heart attack but no artery blockages that typically cause one. Most victims recover within weeks, but in rare cases, it proves fatal.

Dr. Abhishek Deshmukh of the University of Arkansas had treated some of these cases.

“I was very curious why only women were having this,” he said, so he did the first large study of the problem and reported results Wednesday at an American Heart Association conference in Florida.

Using a federal database with about 1,000 hospitals, 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.

No one knows why, said Dr. Abhiram Prasad, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist who presented other research on this syndrome at the conference.