Men who never married in their life face a greater risk of dying due to heart failure, according to a new study that is expected to be presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology in March.
According to a press release by the American College of Cardiology, the study suggests that lifelong bachelors are twice as likely to die in around five years after being diagnosed with heart failure, as compared to men who married at some point or to women who either married or remained unmarried.
“There is a relationship between a person’s relationship status and their clinical prognosis [with heart failure], and it’s important to figure out why that is,” said the study’s lead author Katarina Leyba, MD, resident physician at the University of Colorado. “As our population is getting older and living longer, it’s imperative to determine how to best support the population through the aging process, and that might not be as easy as taking a pill. We need to take a personalized and holistic approach to supporting patients, especially with a chronic disease process like heart failure.”
The researchers arrived at these conclusions after using data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, “a prospective study of 6,800 American adults between 45-84 years old,” as the press release describes it.
The study noted that widowers and men who got divorced or separated did not exhibit this heightened risk of death, and marital status apparently did not influence the risk of death in women – at least as far as death from heart failure is concerned, of course.