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researchers that links changes brought
on by anger or other strong emotions to future arrhythmias and sudden
cardiac arrests, which are blamed for 400,000 deaths annually.
The study—led by Rachel Lampert, M.D., associate
professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, and published in the
Journal of the American College of Cardiology—deepens our
understanding of how anger and other types of mental stress can trigger
potentially lethal ventricular arrhythmias.
Lampert and her team studied 62 patients with
implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) and enlarged hearts. They
were monitored three months after the ICD was implanted and then given a
mental stress test requiring them to recall a stressful situation that
angered them.
Lampert and her team sought to discover whether T-wave
alternans (TWA), which monitor electrical instability in the heart
induced by anger, would predict future ventricular arrhythmias. The team
found that those in the group with more anger-induced electrical
instability were more likely to experience arrhythmias one year after
the study than those in the control group.
"Further studies are needed to determine whether there
is a role for therapies which may reduce anger and the body's response
to stress, thereby preventing arrhythmias in those at risk," said
Lampert.
Lampert's work builds on past research linking strong
emotion to sudden cardiac death. It has been found that devastating
disasters, such as earthquakes, are linked to sudden death. |
