Anger and other strong emotions can trigger potentially deadly heart rhythms in certain vulnerable people, US researchers said on Monday.

Previous studies have shown that earthquakes, war or even the loss of a World Cup Soccer match can increase rates of death from sudden cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops circulating blood.

"It's definitely been shown in all different ways that when you put a whole population under a stressor that sudden death will increase," said Dr. Rachel Lampert of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, whose study appears in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

"Our study starts to look at how does this really affect the electrical system of the heart," Lampert said.

She and colleagues studied 62 patients with heart disease and implantable heart defibrillators or ICDs that can detect dangerous heart rhythms or arrhythmias and deliver an electrical shock to restore a normal heart beat.

"These were people we know already had some vulnerability to arrhythmia," Lampert said in a telephone interview.

Patients in the study took part in an exercise in which they recounted a recent angry episode while Lampert's team did a test called T-Wave Alternans that measures electrical instability in the heart.

Lampert said the team specifically asked questions to get people to relive the angry episode. "We found in the lab setting that yes, anger did increase this electrical instability in these patients," she said.

Next, they followed patients for three years to see which patients later had a cardiac arrest and needed a shock from their implantable defibrillator.

"The people who had the highest anger-induced electrical instability were 10 times more likely than everyone else to have an arrhythmia in follow-up," she said.

Lampert said the study suggests that anger can be deadly, at least for people who are already vulnerable to this type of electrical disturbance in the heart.

"It says yes, anger really does impact the heart's electrical system in very specific ways that can lead to sudden death," she said.

美國研究人員于本周一稱，對某些“脆弱”的人來說，憤怒以其它強烈的情緒會觸發可能致命的心律失常。

此前的研究表明，地震、戰爭甚至輸掉一場世界杯足球賽都會增加心源性猝死的幾率。心源性猝死是一種由心臟突然停止供血而引發的死亡。

位于美國康涅狄格州紐哈芬市的耶魯大學的雷切爾•朗佩特博士說：“各種證據表明，當某一人群所受壓力較大時，該群體的猝死率會上升。”她的這項研究成果在《美國心臟病學會》期刊上發表。

朗佩特說：“我們的研究開始關注情緒如何影響心電系統。”

朗佩特及其同事對62名心臟病患者進行了研究，這些患者都攜有可以探測到危險性心律或心律失常，并能釋放電刺激使心律恢復正常的植入式心臟除顫（ICD）。

郎佩特在接受電話采訪時說：“這些病人容易出現心律失常，而且我們已知道這一狀況。”

郎佩特的研究小組讓病人進行一項練習，即講述最近發生的一件令他們生氣的事情，同時通過一種名叫“T波交替”的試驗來測量病人心電的不穩定度。

郎佩特稱，研究人員特意詢問一些問題，讓病人回憶憤怒的情節。她說：“我們在實驗中發現，憤怒的確會增大這些病人的心電不穩定性。”

之后，研究人員對病人進行了為期三年的跟蹤回訪，調查哪些病人之后出現了心臟驟停并需要ICD的電刺激。

她說：“回訪發現，由生氣所導致的心電最不穩的病人心律失常的幾率是其他人的10倍。”

郎佩特稱，這項研究表明憤怒可能會致命，至少對于那些心臟已經易受這種電子干擾影響的人來說是如此。

她說：“研究表明憤怒的確會以特定的方式影響心電系統，從而導致猝死。”