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WASHINGTON : A broken heart, a surprise party, and other sudden emotional shocks can kill otherwise healthy people, US scientists said in the newest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine published Thursday.
The idea of people collapsing and dying from emotional stress is not simply a poetic image, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, demonstrated.
In a study of 19 cases of what they called "broken heart syndrome" between 1999 and 2003, the researchers demonstrated a link between intense emotional stress and cardiac failure in otherwise healthy individuals.
"It's important for people to know that this is something that emotional stress truly can do," said Dr. Ilan Wittstein, who led the research.
The study dealt with 18 women and one man sent to hospital coronary care units in Baltimore after experiencing chest pains.
For all, the pains came on after sudden emotional stress from things like a death in the family, a surprise birthday party, a car accident, and a biopsy.
None of the 19 had heart disease, and though the median age was 63, the group included two people of ages 27 and 32, respectively.
Without treatment, some of the subjects would have likely died. But all recovered, and none experienced recurrences of the problems, the report said.
The study provided evidence for the existence of stress cardiomyopathy, nicknamed broken heart syndrome by the researchers.
The symptoms resemble a heart attack, which usually involves a blood clot cutting off circulation in the heart.
In broken heart syndrome, the heart simply weakens, making it temporarily less able to pump blood.
"How exactly it occurs is not clear, but the patients had unusually high levels of stress-related brain chemicals and hormones like adrenaline, which may have temporarily impaired their heart function," Wittstein said.
One of the continuing mysteries, Wittsein said, was why nearly all of the victims were female. - AFP
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