Work stress ‘worsens heart health’

Stressful jobs could double the risk of heart problems in people who have already had a heart attack, new research has revealed.

Previous studies have shown that work stress can increase the risk of a first coronary heart disease (CHD) event.

For the latest report researchers analysed people’s work stress and whether a CHD event occurred six years after the first heart attack.

Scientists from University Laval, Quebec, asked 972 men and women aged 35 to 59 years who had returned to work after a heart attack to rate their job strain.

After nearly six years they returned to the participants and found that 206 patients had a confirmed recurrent CHD event (111 nonfatal heart attack, 82 unstable angina, and 13 fatal CHD).

The researchers say that chronic job strain was associated with a two-fold increase in the risk of recurrent CHD events after adjusting for other factors.

“These results suggest that preventive interventions aimed at reducing job strain might have a significant impact on recurrent CHD events,” the researchers write in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).