Women who have leading roles both at home and work are more likely to have a heart attack than those that have an important part in just one domain.

A study conducted in America found that “double stress” puts more strain on a woman’s heart than factors such as depression, alcohol use, cigarette smoking, leisure‐time physical activity, body mass index, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and high cholesterol.

The paper found that post-menopausal women with highly-charged dual roles are 21 per cent more likely to suffer a heart attack.

Other causes such as a traumatic life event, including a divorce or a spouse’s death, and socio-economic issues can increase heart attacks by 12 per cent.

The study tracked 80,825 participants between almost fifteen years between 1991 to 2015.

‘These findings remind us of the dual-burden working women face’

Senior author Yvonne Michael, an associate professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health, told The Journal of the American Heart Association: “The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted ongoing stresses for women in balancing paid work and social stressors.

“We know from other studies that work strain may play a role in developing CHD, but now we can better pinpoint the combined impact of stress at work and at home on these poor health outcomes.

“My hope is that these findings are a call for better methods of monitoring stress in the workplace and remind us of the dual-burden working women face as a result of their unpaid work as caregivers at home.”

Conglong Wang, co-lead author of the paper, added: “Our findings are a critical reminder to women, and those who care about them, that the threat of stress to human health should not go ignored.” She went on to say that the pandemic has made the findings more pertinent.

Researchers said that they hope to focus future studies on the effects of the stress of shift work and gender.

Despite the findings, men are still far more likely to suffer a heart attack than women, with an average of 70 to 89 per cent of fatalities due to cardiovascular disease being recorded in men in the UK.

Heart disease, which causes heart attacks, is currently the third leading cause of death of the UK, after Covid and Alzheimers.

The findings were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.