{"id":31941,"date":"2012-09-24T09:00:23","date_gmt":"2012-09-24T13:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/?post_type=voices&p=31941"},"modified":"2012-09-24T09:17:45","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T13:17:45","slug":"stress-and-coronary-heart-disease-what-role-does-gender-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/2012\/09\/24\/stress-and-coronary-heart-disease-what-role-does-gender-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Stress and Coronary Heart Disease: What Role Does Gender Play?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Xu is a health economist at Yale University School of Medicine. Her research has focused on improving health care delivery and health outcomes of older adults and women, as well as economic evaluation of health interventions.<\/em><\/p>\n

I am glad to see a growing literature on the link between psychosocial stress and coronary heart disease, as well as an increased interest in the gender differences in this relationship.\u00a0 But the assessment of psychosocial stress from a gender perspective seems to deserve more careful thinking and discussion.<\/p>\n

A meta-analysis published in the Lancet<\/em><\/a> last week reported a significant and “broadly similar” association between job strain and incidence of coronary heart disease for men and women.\u00a0 Like many existing studies, this analysis measured job strain based on workload demand and control.\u00a0 While these are two important work-related stressors, they may not adequately capture stress from work-family conflict often encountered by women because of the multiple roles they play in family life and at work.\u00a0 For example, caregiving responsibilities for children and elderly parents often fall on the female members of the family.\u00a0 This can cause major work-family conflict for women and become an important source of stress.<\/p>\n

Men, on the other hand, appear to be more affected by job insecurity \u2013 another work-related stressor.\u00a0 Just like Dr. Netterstr\u00f8m pointed out in the comment accompanying the Lancet<\/em> article<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 that “different types of work will have different strain profiles”\u00a0\u2013 there are unique strain profiles for men and women as well.\u00a0 Whether evaluating data or consulting patients, let us all be a little more cautious about the role of gender when assessing stress as a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Xiao Xu examines the unique stressors – both at home and at work – that women and men may face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":646,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[329,1470,1454,698],"class_list":["post-31941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-cardiovascular-risk","tag-gender-roles","tag-stress","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nejm.org\/cardioexchange\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}