Researchers at Emory University have developed a new way to measure how stress affects the heart, which could help doctors diagnose and treat heart disease more quickly in high-risk patients. This new approach, called the cardiovascular reactivity risk score, was designed to provide a clearer picture of how stress impacts heart health.
The study, published on January 21 in the Journal of the American Heart Association, was led by Dr. Arshed Quyyumi, Dr. Viola Vaccarino, and Dr. Kasra Moazzami. The team analyzed data from 629 participants between 2011 and 2016 to understand how stress affects the heart.
Measuring Stress in the Lab
To mimic real-life stress, researchers asked participants to give a three-minute speech about a difficult topic, such as the mistreatment of a family member in a nursing home. While they spoke, the researchers monitored their heart activity and blood pressure. They specifically measured three key changes:
- How the blood vessel lining reacted to stress
- How much the blood vessels tightened
- How changes in blood flow were linked to heart disease
By combining these three factors, the researchers developed a risk score that predicts how likely a person is to experience future heart problems.
Why This Matters
For years, doctors have known that stress plays a role in heart disease, but measuring its impact has been difficult. Until now, doctors mostly relied on patients’ self-reported stress levels, which can be subjective and unreliable. This new risk score provides an objective way to measure stress-related heart risks.
Dr. Moazzami explains, “Our goal was to combine these three findings into a single risk score. We wanted to see if they were connected and, more importantly, if bringing them together could improve our ability to predict risk.”
The study found that as participants’ stress levels increased, so did their cardiovascular risk scores. This means that people who reacted more strongly to stress were at a higher risk of developing heart problems in the future.
A Shift in Heart Disease Treatment
Emory researchers have been studying the link between stress and heart disease for decades. Dr. Puja Mehta and Dr. Viola Vaccarino have led studies showing that mental stress is a major risk factor, particularly for women.
Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States, and understanding how stress contributes to it could improve prevention and treatment.
Dr. Moazzami, who joined Emory as a cardiology fellow in 2018, was drawn to the university because of its strong reputation for studying how stress affects heart health. He and his colleagues believe that addressing mental well-being should be a key part of heart disease prevention.
What’s Next?
The next step is to test whether this risk score can help improve patient care. Researchers hope that by using stress response tests like the one in this study, cardiology clinics can better understand how stress impacts heart health. This could lead to more personalized treatments that focus on both mental and physical health.
“By adopting protocols similar to those used in this study, we can routinely evaluate the impact of stress in cardiology clinics and better understand its effects on heart health,” says Dr. Moazzami.
This new approach could change the way doctors diagnose and manage heart disease, offering a more precise way to identify high-risk patients and provide early treatment.
If you care about heart disease, please read studies about a big cause of heart failure, and common blood test could advance heart failure treatment.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about a new way to repair human heart, and results showing drinking coffee may help reduce heart failure risk.
The research findings can be found in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Copyright © 2025 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
