A person's current marital status and past marital losses may be related to their survival odds after a stroke, a new study suggests. US researchers followed stroke survivors for an average of five years after the event and found those who were never married, remarried, divorced or widowed had significantly higher risks of dying compared to those who had a long-term stable marriage.
Losing two or more marriages to death or divorce raised the odds of mortality after stroke still higher, though never-marrieds had the highest risk of all.
"A handful of recent studies have shown how social stress, such as job loss and marital loss, increase the risk of suffering a serious health event such as a heart attack or stroke," said lead study author Matthew Dupre of the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina.
For men and women who had never married, the risk of dying after a stroke was 71 percent greater than those who were continuously married. Those who were divorced, remarried or widowed were about 23 percent more likely to die after a stroke, though the risks associated with divorce decreased over time.
Stroke is one of the top causes of death in the U.S. More than 800,000 adults will experience a stroke this year, according to the American Heart Association, and about 7 million U.S. adults are currently stroke survivors.
Obesity, high blood pressure and smoking are known risk factors for having a stroke. Past research suggests that social support, such as marriage, can also influence both risk for stroke and the likelihood of recovery, Dupre and colleagues write in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
"This is the first (study) to show that marital history can have significant consequences for prognosis after a stroke," Dupre told Reuters Health. "And a somewhat unexpected finding was that remarriage doesn't seem to reduce the risks from past divorce or widowhood."