Childhood Sexual Abuse Linked to Later Heart Attacks in Men

Researchers from the University of Toronto have concluded that men who experienced childhood sexual abuse are three times more likely to have a heart attack than men who were not sexually abused as children.

The researchers said they found no association between childhood sexual abuse and heart attacks among women.

The study was published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.

Of the nearly 14,000 men and women examined for the study, a total of 57 men and 154 women reported being sexually abused by someone close to them before they turned 18 and 377 men and 285 women said that a doctor, nurse or other health professional had diagnosed them with a heart attack or myocardial infarction.

Lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson said the findings were somewhat surprising.

"We had expected that the abuse-heart attack link would be due to unhealthy behaviors in sexual abuse survivors, such as higher rates of alcohol use or smoking, or increased levels of general stress and poverty in adulthood when compared to non-abused males," Fuller-Thomson said. "However, we adjusted statistically for 15 potential risk factors for heart attack, including age, race, obesity, smoking, physical inactivity, diabetes mellitus, education level and household income, and still found a three-fold risk of heart attack."

Researchers said it is unclear why sexually abused men, but not women, experienced higher odds of heart attack although the results suggest that the pathways linking childhood sexual abuse to physical health outcomes in later life may be gender-specific.

According to the researchers, it is possible that females adopt different coping strategies than males as women are more likely to get the support and counseling needed to deal with their sexual abuse.

Fuller-Thomson warned that the findings need to be replicated in future scientific studies before anything definitive can be said about the link.

"But if other researchers find a similar association, one possible explanation is that adverse child experiences become biologically embedded in the way individuals react to stress throughout their life, particularly with respect to the production of cortisol, the hormone associated with the "fight-or-flight" response," she said. "Cortisol is also implicated in the development of cardiovascular diseases."