ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2002
Married couples' risk of same disease: cross sectional study.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 74 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
74 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 179 citations in OpenAlex.
- Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and meta-analyses of 22 traits and UK Biobank analysis of 133 traits.Nature human behaviour · 2023Pooled it
- Spousal diabetes status as a risk factor for incident type 2 diabetes: a prospective cohort study and meta-analysis.Acta diabetologica · 2019Pooled it
- Spousal concordance for hypertension: A meta-analysis of observational studies.Journal of clinical hypertension (Greenwich, Conn.) · 2017Pooled it
- Spousal diabetes as a diabetes risk factor: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2014Pooled it
- Population-Level Implications of Parental Similarity for the Prevalence and Heritability of Psychiatric Disorders.JAMA psychiatry · 2026Article
- Domain-Specific Cognitive Concordance in Older Married Couples.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Prevalence and concordance of cardiometabolic risk markers and health behaviour among couples after a gestational diabetes mellitus-affected pregnancy.Diabetes, obesity & metabolism · 2025Article
- A comparison of partner resemblance trends across putative same-sex and opposite-sex couples in the UK biobank.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- [Spousal correlations of blood lipid based on a family design].Beijing da xue xue bao. Yi xue ban = Journal of Peking University. Health sciences · 2025Article
- Mechanisms creating homogamy in depressiveness in couples: A longitudinal study from Czechia.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Relationship between health checkups and cancer screenings of wives and health checkups of their husbands: A cross-sectional study in Japan.Preventive medicine reports · 2024Article
- Upper Airway-Related Symptoms According to Mental Illness and Sleep Disorders among Workers Employed by a Large Non-Profit Organization in the Mountain West Region of the United States.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- What is the impact of one's chronic illness on his or her spouse's future chronic illness: a community-based prospective cohort study.BMC medicine · 2023Article
- What causes concordance of hypertension between spouses in India? Identifying a critical knowledge gap from a nationally representative cross-sectional sample of 63,020 couples aged 15 + years.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Association of Spousal Diabetes Status and Ideal Cardiovascular Health Metrics With Risk of Incident Diabetes Among Chinese Adults.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Partner choice, confounding and trait convergence all contribute to phenotypic partner similarity.Nature human behaviour · 2023Article
- Shared Risk Factors for Depressive Disorder Among Older Adult Couples in Korea.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Human height: a model common complex trait.Annals of human biology · 2023Review
- The prevalence of hypertension and hypertension control among married Namibian couples.PloS one · 2023Article
- The role of the family in health promotion: a scoping review of models and mechanisms.Health promotion international · 2022Article
14 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo determine whether people whose marital partners have depression, diabetes, hypertension, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, hyperlipidaemia, peptic ulcer disease, or asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are at increased risk of the same disease.
designCross sectional study.
setting10 practices from the Trent Focus Collaborative Research Practice Network.
participants8386 married couples (16 772 individuals) from a population of 29 014 participants aged 30-74 years. OUTCOMES: Risk of disease in participants whose marital partner had that disease compared with those whose partner did not.
resultsAfter both partners' age, smoking, and obesity and which general practice they attend were adjusted for, participants whose marital partner had asthma, depression, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia, and peptic ulcer disease were at increased risk of having the same disease. The adjusted odds ratios were 1.69 (95% confidence interval 1.43 to 2.98) for asthma, 2.08 (1.71 to 2.54) for depression, 1.32 (1.04 to 1.67) for hypertension, 1.44 (1.19 to 1.75) for hyperlipidaemia, and 2.01 (1.48 to 2.73) for peptic ulcer disease.
conclusionPartners of people with specific diseases are at increased risk of the disease themselves-at least 70% increased risk for asthma, depression, and peptic ulcer disease. This implicates shared environmental causes in some diseases in addition to any genetic or distant exposure or shared behaviours with respect to seeking health care.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.