The Journal: New England Journal of Medicine

The Study: Scientists from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, working under the auspices of the National Institute on Aging, looked at more than 500,000 couples over the age of 65 in an attempt to see whether one partner's serious illness proved harmful to the other. The short answer: yes. The hospitalization of one member of a couple significantly raised the other's risk of death.  While the risk diminished somewhat after the first 30 days, it remained elevated for two years after hospitalization.

Some diseases are particularly harmful to a partner's health: a wife hospitalized with heart disease raises her husband's risk of death by 12%; psychiatric disease boosts it by 19%; hip fracture is about the same; and dementia drives it up by 22%.  Colon cancer in one spouse, though, doesn't seem to have much of an effect on the longevity of the other spouse.

What it Means: The reasons for the increase mortality are unclear, but probably have to do with stress, and with depriving the un-hospitalized spouse of companionship and perhaps of economic support as well. What this new research makes clear is that social connectedness may be more important to physical health than most people realize.

From the Magazine:
07/19/2004: The Price Of Pressure