Women in physically demanding jobs who have high blood pressure are three times more likely to develop heart disease.
Women with high blood pressure should not have a physically demanding job. This is the recommendation from a large Danish study, which concludes that there is an increased risk of coronary heart disease among this working population. The work has been published in the journal European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
Danish cohort
To reach this conclusion, the authors analyzed data on blood pressure and physical activity at work of 12,093 female nurses, grouped into a cohort launched in 1993 in Denmark.
The participants were divided into three groups, according to the level of physical activity induced by their job – sedentary, moderate (walking and standing almost constantly, but no considerable physical exertion), and finally, high (walking and standing position associated with physical tasks, such as lifting weights, etc.).
The women were followed for fifteen years. During this time, 580 developed ischemic heart disease. This pathology is characterized by narrowing of the arteries, leading to less blood supply to the heart. In addition, of all the participants, nearly 12% had high blood pressure.
Risk tripled
However, according to the researchers’ observations, women in physically demanding jobs with high blood pressure were three times more likely to develop coronary heart disease compared to other women, whose blood pressure was normal and whose employment, less taxing.
So far, this can be seen as a logical result. However, the scientists managed to establish a specific risk factor, linked to the combination of the two factors (blood pressure and high activity). Thus, 60 cases out of 10,000 / year are linked to this combination, while hypertension alone is responsible for 15 cases out of 10,000 / year.
“Our results suggest that hypertensive women in physically demanding jobs are particularly at risk for heart disease,” the authors write. This combination of factors had already been demonstrated for men and women, but never in an exclusively female population.
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