Death Of Your Partner May Increase Your Risk Of Developing Irregular Heartbeat: Study

When someone is bereaved, the post-death period can lead to a number of mental and physical problems, such as depression, heart disease, suicidal inclinations...as well as irregular heartbeat.

Danish experts from Aarhus University reveal that when a person who is younger than 60 loses loved ones, he is exposed to the greatest risk of irregular heartbeat.

For a year after death, there is the risk of the person developing atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat.

A number of studies show the links between stress heart attacks or stroke. However, the links with irregular heartbeat is a recent disclosure.

Experts studied 974,732 people from 1995 to 2014, noting that 88,612 of the participants were only newly diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, while 886,120 were "healthy controls" shown the matches for age and sex.

"The severely stressful life event of losing a partner was followed by a transiently increased risk of atrial fibrillation lasting for a year, especially for the least predicted losses," researchers wrote in the study.

Those who were diagnosed with irregular heartbeats were more inclined to experience cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Still, the risk of developing atrial fibrillation for the first time was 41 percent higher among those who have undergone bereavement compared to those who have not, showed the data.

The risk was most in the eight to 14 days after a death. It reduced after a year, after which the mourners integrated socially and seemed like others.

Those who were less than 60 years seemed more than twice as likely to develop irregular heartbeat after the loss of a loved one. Those whose partners were healthy for a month before death tended to be 57 percent more likely to develop the disorder.

The findings were published in the journal Open Heart.