All-Cause Mortality Up in Female Domestic Abuse Survivors

FRIDAY, March 13, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Women who survive domestic abuse (DA) are more likely to have type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and to die from any cause, according to a study published in the Feb. 18 issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Joht Singh Chandan, M.B.B.S., from Warwick Medical School and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and colleagues assessed the association between DA and cardiometabolic disease in primary care patients in the United Kingdom between 1995 and 2017. The retrospective cohort study used age and lifestyle factors to match 18,547 women who were exposed to DA to 72,231 unexposed women.

The researchers found that the adjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR) for experiencing a CVD event was 1.31 (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.11 to 1.55; P = 0.001) for women who were exposed to DA versus those who were not exposed to DA. Women who were exposed to DA also had an increased risk for type 2 diabetes mellitus (IRR, 1.51; 95 percent CI, 1.30 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and all-cause mortality (IRR, 1.44; 95 percent CI, 1.24 to 1.67; P < 0.001). The investigators did not observe an association between DA and hypertension (IRR, 0.99; 95 percent CI, 0.88 to 1.12; P = 0.873).

“It is important to note that not all cases of domestic abuse go onto develop adverse health outcomes, but from this study we can see that within this dataset, the cohort of women recorded to have experienced domestic abuse are at a greater risk than those without such records present,” Chandan said in a statement.

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