Study: spouse’s illness can put caregiver at risk

? Highlighting the deep bonds between longtime husbands and wives, new research suggests that when an older person falls seriously ill, his or her spouse faces a heightened risk of death.

“We showed that you can die of a broken heart not just when your partner dies, but also when your partner falls ill,” said Dr. Nicholas Christakis, lead author of the study and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

The study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed more than 518,000 elderly couples for nine years. It found the risk of death rose nearly 5 percent for a husband whose wife was hospitalized – a marker for the onset of serious illness – and nearly 3 percent for a wife whose husband took ill.

The risk of a husband or wife dying increased if the sick spouse became severely disabled. For instance, a woman whose husband was hospitalized with dementia was 28 percent more likely to die than if her husband had remained healthy; for congestive heart failure, the figure was 15 percent.

Though it has long been known that widows or widowers often die soon after their spouse passes away – a phenomenon known as the “bereavement effect” – Christakis’ research is the first to look at the impact of serious illness on husbands and wives’ death.