Ladies: A rocky relationship may do more than just break your heart.

A new University of Utah study shows the more strained a woman's marriage is, the more likely she is to suffer depression - and that can lead to a higher risk for "metabolic syndrome," a group of risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

And your husbands?

Anger, conflict and hostility can lead to depression for them, too, they reported in questionnaires. But unlike women - and for reasons researchers are still exploring - it doesn't translate into hypertension, obesity around the waistline, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low levels of HDL, or "good" cholesterol.

One explanation for the difference may be chalked up to women's heightened sensitivity to relationship problems - an observation borne out in a growing body of research on marriage and health.

"Women are quicker to notice when things are not going well in relationships, more so than men," said Tim Smith, a U. psychology professor and co-author of the study, which is being presented today at the American Psychosomatic Society's annual meeting in Chicago. "They're more troubled by that and they work harder to do something about that than men do, so you can look at that as a cumulative burden that is a source of chronic stress," he said.

Nancy Henry, a U. doctoral student in psychology and the lead author on the study, said past research suggests women's self identities are more deeply rooted in relationships than men. They also tend to ruminate about them more.

"It's not saying men don't want close relationships," she said, "but it's saying their 'self construe' is based on things in society at large."

Unraveling the gender disparity is important, U. researchers say, because heart disease - a generic term that encompasses problems affecting the coronary arteries, heart valves, and heart muscle - is the number one killer of both sexes. It accounts for about 25 percent of all deaths in the country; in Utah, an average of 3,800 people succumb to it each year.

The U. researchers used Dan Jones & Associates, a polling firm, and newspaper ads placed between 2001 and 2005 to recruit 276 couples. Most were between the ages of 40 and 70, and, on average, had married 20 years earlier.

The couples filled out questionnaires about the quality of their relationships. They also went to a U. clinic where their waists and blood pressure were measured, and they were given glucose and cholesterol tests to determine whether they had metabolic syndrome, also known as syndrome X or insulin resistance syndrome.

Though some critics question the clinical usefulness of metabolic syndrome, Henry said she chose to study it because its components are unquestionably tied to cardiovascular disease. And because strained marriages can be depressing - and depression can trigger metabolic syndrome - it's a good metric for how an aching heart can turn into an ailing one.

The hope, the researchers said, is to find ways to prevent women's health problems. But they caution their study was simple and their results are preliminary. "It's a little premature to say [women] would lower their risk of heart disease if they improved the tone and quality of their marriages - or dumped their husbands," Smith said.

Still, it raises the possibility that women should be concerned about more than just the traditional risk factors for cardiovascular health, and think about the "quality of our emotional and family lives," Smith said.

lrosetta@sltrib.com