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Cases of “broken heart syndrome” are on the rise in the United States, especially among middle-aged women, according to a new study.
Research published last month in theJournal of the American Heart Associationfound that women ages 50 to 74 were “the most prominent at-risk group” for broken heart syndrome.
Using data from the National Inpatient Sample database, researchers studied 135,463 cases of broken heart syndrome reported between 2006 to 2017. While the diagnoses increased across both sexes and all age groups, “the increase over time has been especially pronounced among women aged [over] 50 years,” according to the study.
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“There is something potentially going on around the perimenopausal period such that just beyond 50 and up until age 74,” Dr. Susan Cheng, a senior author of the study and director of public health research at Cedars-Sinai’s Smidt Heart Institute in Los Angeles,toldToday.
She added, “There’s this window of opportunity for the condition to develop in women. Their heart is vulnerable.”
Last year, a small studyfound that cases of broken heart syndrome were increasingdue to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic say that they have “found a significant increase” in patients with broken heart syndrome over the last four months, compared to previous years. Between March 1 and April 30, cardiologists saw 258 patients with acute coronary syndrome, and of those, 7.8 percent had broken heart syndrome, compared to 1.7 percent prior to the pandemic.
source: people.com
