The study, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, followed 33,127 women for seven years, starting when they were 53 years old on average. None of them had a history of high blood pressure or heart disease when they joined the study; by the end of follow-up, a total of 7,096 women (21 percent) had developed hypertension. High blood pressure was 12 percent more likely among women who experienced sexual harassment and 6 percent more common among those who had a history of sexual assault, the study found. Women who experienced both types of trauma had a 17 percent greater chance of developing hypertension. “We have long understood that stress is linked to high blood pressure,” says the senior study author, Rebecca Thurston, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and the director of the Women’s Biobehavioral Health Research Program at the University of Pittsburgh. “There has only recently been more attention to sexual harassment or assault — major stressors experienced by many women — and their implications for women’s heart health,” Dr. Thurston says.
Growing Body of Research on Sexual Violence and Heart Health
These latest findings linking sexual harassment and assault to hypertension risk are consistent with an emerging body of research underscoring how toxic these experiences of sexual violence can be for women’s cardiovascular health, Thurston says. A study published in Social Science and Medicine, for example, examined the link between high blood pressure and a range of potential risk factors, including sexual harassment, racial discrimination, workplace abuse, and occupational exposure to toxic pollutants. Only sexual harassment was associated with elevated blood pressure, this study found. Another study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, examined blood pressure levels among women who were nonsmokers without any history of heart disease. Overall, 19 percent of the women had a history of workplace sexual harassment and 22 percent had experienced sexual assault, this study found. Women with a history of sexual harassment were more than twice as likely to develop hypertension.
Despite Some Limitations, Studies Underscore Consequences of Sexual Trauma
One limitation of the new study is that researchers lacked data on the timing or severity of any sexual trauma incidents, which might have influenced their health. Another drawback was that participants were all part of the Nurses Health Study II, a population of predominantly white, well-educated, and well-paid women whose health outcomes might not be representative of the broader population. Even so, the results underscore the potential for sexual trauma to have lasting implications for heart health, says the lead study author, Rebecca Lawn, PhD, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston. There are many possible explanations for this connection, Dr. Lawn says. A trauma may directly lead to hypertension because it can send the body’s sympathetic nervous system into overdrive, triggering a fight-or-flight response that leads to an elevated heart rate and higher blood pressure over time. Beyond this, traumatic experiences can impact heart health indirectly by making people more likely to take up or continue behaviors, such as smoking, that increase the risk of hypertension, Lawn adds. “Preventing sexual violence against women, which is important in its own right, may also reduce some of the burden of hypertension in women and benefit their long-term cardiovascular health,” Lawn says.
