Sexual Harassment, Assault Tied to High Blood Pressure in Women

TUESDAY, Feb. 22, 2022 (HealthDay News) — Sexual assault and office sexual harassment could enhance girls’s long-term threat of hypertension and coronary heart illness, a brand new research suggests.

High blood strain is a significant threat issue for coronary heart illness, which is the main killer of U.S. girls, accounting for one in three deaths.

Sexual violence or harassment aren’t acknowledged as threat elements for coronary heart illness, however these findings counsel that screening for them may gain advantage girls’s coronary heart well being.

“Reducing sexual violence towards girls, which is necessary in its personal proper, can also present a technique for bettering girls’s lifetime cardiovascular well being,” stated research writer Rebecca Lawn, a postdoctoral researcher on the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

Her workforce performed a seven-year follow-up (2008 to 2015) of greater than 33,000 girls (common age 53) in an ongoing U.S. well being research.

At the beginning, none had a historical past of hypertension. But about one in 5 had developed hypertension by the tip of the follow-up.

The findings additionally confirmed that, of their lifetime, 23% of the ladies had been victims of sexual assault; 12% had skilled office sexual harassment; and 6% had skilled each.

Compared to these with no historical past of sexual assault or harassment, the danger of hypertension was 21% increased amongst girls who had skilled each; 15% increased amongst those that skilled office sexual harassment; and 11% increased amongst sexual assault victims.

The findings had been printed Feb. 22 within the Journal of the American Heart Association.

“We know that experiences of sexual violence within the type of sexual assault and office sexual harassment are frequent, and that girls are disproportionately victims of such violence, with 13% to 44% of girls reporting sexual assault and as much as 80% of girls reporting office sexual harassment,” Lawn stated in a journal information launch. “However, publicity to sexual violence will not be widely known as a contributor to girls’s cardiovascular well being.”

The researchers discovered no elevated threat of hypertension amongst girls who had a historical past of different forms of trauma and never sexual violence. That means that elevated hypertension threat doesn’t look like related to all trauma publicity, she added.

“These outcomes counsel that screening for a broader vary of experiences of sexual violence in routine well being care, together with sexual harassment within the office, in addition to verbal harassment or assault, and being conscious of and treating potential cardiovascular well being penalties could also be helpful for girls’s long-term well being,” Lawn stated.

More data

For extra on coronary heart illness and girls, go to the U.S. Office on Women’s Health.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Heart Association, information launch, Feb. 22, 2022