NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Whether a person has an unhappy or a happy marriage can affect the size of his or her heart--and not in a romantic sense, new research reports.

A group of Canadian investigators found that unhappily married people with mildly elevated blood pressure were more likely than those in connubial bliss to have an increase in the thickness of the heart chamber walls after 3 years.

Over time, high blood pressure, or hypertension, can thicken the wall of the heart's largest blood-pumping chamber--the left ventricle--and keep it from contracting effectively, a condition that can lead to heart failure.

Speaking to reporters on Friday at the 17th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Society of Hypertension, lead author Dr. Brian Baker of the University of Toronto, Canada reported, "We assumed that (increase in heart chamber size) was because blood pressure was raised."

In order to measure how stress affects cardiovascular health, Baker and his colleagues measured blood pressure over a 24-hour period in 103 men and women at the start of the study and again 3 years later. At both times, participants also completed questionnaires about the quality of their jobs and marriages, and 72 people underwent an echocardiogram to examine changes in their left ventricles.

All study participants were married at the beginning and the end of the study. The researchers found those with relatively happy marriages had a reduction in heart thickness over time, with left ventricular mass decreasing by 8%. In contrast, those with somewhat unsatisfying marriages experienced a 6% increase in left ventricular mass.

Baker told Reuters Health he suspected the impact of marriage quality relates to the amount of time spent with a spouse. Over the 24-hour period, respondents in unhappy marriages had relatively higher blood pressure readings when the measurements were taken in the presence of a spouse, and lower readings when the spouse was absent.

However, those who reported being in happy marriages experienced the exact opposite trend, with blood pressure decreasing in the presence of their spouses.

"You must have quality and quantity in terms of the marital context to have an effect on blood pressure," Baker told reporters.

However, while Baker noted that marriages remained stable during the study period, he and his team found that around one half of study participants had experienced job changes, and more than one-quarter had left their former job. Consequently, Baker told Reuters Health their results regarding the effect of job stress on blood pressure were "inconclusive," and the question should be taken up in subsequent studies.

Reference Source 89

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