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Prolonged QT interval more likely in unmarried vs. married adults
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Compared with married people, unmarried people were more likely to have a prolonged QT interval, according to findings published in The American Journal of Cardiology.
The association was stronger in men compared with women and in younger people compared with older people, according to the researchers.
Muhammad Imtiaz Ahmad, MD, and colleagues investigated the association of marital status with prolonged QT interval in participants free of CVD at baseline using data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
“The underlying pathophysiological basis for the relationship between marital status and poor outcomes is unclear,” Ahmad, an assistant professor of hospital medicine at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and colleagues wrote. “However, various explanations have been proposed such as modification of health behaviors, widening of social networks and the possibility of selection bias wherein healthy individuals tend to enter marriage more frequently than unhealthy individuals [to] confer a survival advantage.”
The researchers analyzed QT interval measured from 12-lead ECG readings. Marital status was defined through self-reporting of one of four categories: married, divorced/separated, widowed or never married.
Unmarried status was associated with a 46% increased risk for prolonged QT interval compared with married status (OR = 1.46; 95% CI, 1.16-1.83), Ahmad and colleagues wrote.
The relationship between marital status and prolonged QT interval was stronger in men than in women (OR for men = 1.75; 95% CI, 1.27-2.41 for men; OR for women = 1.26; 95% CI, 0.92-1.73; P for interaction = .03) and was stronger in adults aged 60 years or younger than in those older than 60 years (OR for younger people = 1.72; 95% CI, 1.21-2.42; OR for older people = 1.4; 95% CI, 1.05-1.88; P for interaction = .002), according to the researchers.
When comparing unmarried to married, the dose-response relationship with prolonged QT was highest in never-married participants (OR = 1.74; 95% CI, 1.15-2.62), followed by the divorced/separated group (OR = 1.57; 95% CI, 1.13.-2.14) and then the widowed group (OR = 1.28; 95% CI, 0.94-1.73), Ahmad and colleagues wrote.
Participants were examined at only one point of time, which did not allow for evaluating longitudinal changes. In married couples, data on marriage satisfaction, which can have negative effects on health, were not recorded, the researchers wrote. – by Earl Holland Jr.
Disclosures: Ahmad and colleagues report no relevant financial disclosures.
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