Sexual assault, harassment linked to higher risk of high blood pressure in women, study finds

New research is shedding light on how women’s experiences of sexual assault and harassment can have negative effects on their cardiovascular health.

A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association details how women who have experienced sexual assault, workplace sexual harassment or both may be at higher long-term risk of developing high blood pressure than women who have not.

Researchers behind the study analyzed data over seven years from the ongoing Nurses’ Health Study II, one of the largest prospective investigations into the risk factors for major chronic disease in women.

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More than 33,000 study participants with no history of cardiovascular cerebrovascular disease in 2008 reported whether they had experienced sexual harassment at work or other unwanted sexual contact, as well as exposure to other traumas, such as an accident, disaster or death of a loved one. The final sample for the study included mostly white middle-aged women ages 43 to 64.

Instance of sexual harassment appeared to be common, with about 23 percent of women saying they had experienced sexual assault at some point in their life and 12 percent reporting workplace sexual harassment. About 6 percent said they had experienced both.

In a 2015 follow up of the group, researchers found about 21 percent of the women reported developing high blood pressure over the follow up period. Women who reported having experienced both sexual assault and workplace sexual harassment had a 21 percent increased risk of developing hypertension compared to women who did not. Women who reported workplace sexual harassment had a 15 percent higher risk, while women who reported sexual assault had an 11 percent higher risk of hypertension than those with no sexual trauma.

“We did not find any association of increased risk for hypertension among women who had a history of other types of trauma and who did not experience sexual violence, suggesting that increased hypertension risk does not appear to be associated with all trauma exposure,” Rebecca B Lawn, researcher at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston and the study’s lead author, said in a statement.

“Our finding that experiencing both sexual assault and workplace sexual harassment had the highest risk of hypertension underscores the potential compounding effects of multiple sexual violence exposures on women’s long-term cardiovascular health,” Lawn said.

Nearly 43 percent of women in the US ages 20 and older have high blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US

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