"New Clues Why Women Get Broken-Heart Syndrome"

"Study comes to surprising conclusion about mysterious malady’s causes, suggests possible remedies"

Experts say broken-heart syndrome, which most often affects women in their 60s or older, can be brought on by strong emotions, such as grief, anger and anxiety, or by physical stress. A common trigger is a loved one’s illness or death, while for some patients there is no clear-cut cause for an attack. “It is a romantic notion, but you really can get this from heartache,” says Dr. Reynolds, whose study was published online in November in the American Journal of Cardiology.

Roberta Silver, who participated in Dr. Reynolds’s study, recalls driving in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2007 when she suddenly felt her heart pounding. She pulled over to a cafe, where she became intensely ill. An ambulance took her to a hospital, and she was told she had suffered a heart attack. But a series of tests, including an angiogram, all turned up negative, she says.

“I had no blockage, nothing,” recalls Ms. Silver, who was visiting California from her home in New Jersey. After several days in the hospital, doctors concluded she had suffered broken-heart syndrome. Ms. Silver, who is 70, still isn’t sure what caused the event, and she hasn’t had a repeat episode. But she was ill with an upper respiratory infection and under stress at the time: A cousin she had been close to had died and Ms. Silver was planning to attend his funeral in San Francisco. And preparations for her son’s wedding were proving upsetting.

Broken-heart syndrome can at times be brought on by intense joy and excitement. Vera Compagnino, 53, who also participated in the recent study, remembers how elated she felt one October day 10 years ago watching her son playing football. “It was such an exciting game,” recalls Ms. Compagnino, a teacher’s assistant in Staten Island, N.Y. In her exuberance, she began chanting some cheer songs from her high school days and vowed to do a cartwheel if her son’s team scored a touchdown.

Suddenly, Ms. Compagnino started feeling an intense pain in her chest “like an elephant was sitting on me,” she recalled. Yet at the hospital, doctors found nothing on her angiogram that was amiss --- no sign of clogged arteries. She became a patient of Dr. Reynolds, who believes anxiety played a role in bringing on the attack and has tried to guide her in the hope of preventing future episodes.

There were 6,230 cases of people in the U.S. hospitalized with broken-heart syndrome in 2012, according to a recent study. Patients usually heal within days or weeks without residual damage to the heart. But complications can occur, as well as fatalities.