Marital status and cardiovascular disease: can a soulmate prevent a “broken heart?"

During the last century, the management of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women and men has focused on a persistent, yet suboptimal, fight against traditional cardiovascular risk factors, primarly hypertension, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and smoking. Despite prevention campaigns and the availability of more effective therapies, CVD persists as the number one cause of mortality and morbidities, suggesting that the current knowledge of determinants of cardiovascular health is still far from comprehensively understood. The gap between the expected and the observed poses challenges for both cardiovascular scientists and clinicians who struggle to foster innovative approaches aimed at improving the well-being of individuals with CVD. Psycho-cultural-social factors, which are associated with the gender of individuals, are rarely measured as determinants of health outcomes. Neverthless, they have been proven to play an upstream role in mediating worse CV clinical outcomes.