(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- People who have had one heart attack have good reason to chill out on the job. Stressing out over work can lead to another one.

That’s the key finding from Canadian researchers who studied nearly 1,000 men and women between ages 35 and 59 who returned to work after suffering a first heart attack. All were followed for about six years. Over that time, 111 had another non-fatal heart attack, 82 were diagnosed with unstable angina, and 13 died from a second attack.

People who reported lots of job stress were twice as likely as others to have another heart attack or other coronary heart disease event. The result held true even after the findings were adjusted to take other heart disease risk factors into account. Job stress was equally dangerous for men and women as well, and no differences were seen according to age, marital status, educational levels, economic status, or the level of support the person was receiving at work.
 

The authors aren’t sure how stress on the job might be impacting heart disease risk after a first heart attack but speculate it may lead to biological changes that increase inflammation in the arteries. This, in turn, could increase the risk for blood clots that lead to heart disease events.

Whatever the cause, however, these investigators believe more should be done to address job stress among people who have had a heart attack, and a fellow investigator writing in an accompanying editorial agrees. “If physicians have difficulty finding adequate time to discuss job experiences with patients, this role may be adopted by other health care professionals, such as experienced cardiac rehabilitation nurses,” notes Kristina Orth-Gomér, M.D., of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. “Patients are often relieved and may spontaneously report improved quality of life and increased capacity for coping once they have their concerns assessed.”

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association, 2007;298:1652-1660