Marriage may protect against the development of heart disease and or stroke as well as influencing who is more likely to die of it, suggests a study that was published online in the journal Heart, as reported by Science Daily.

Eighty percent of cardiovascular disease can be attributed to well known risk factors such as age, gender, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking and diabetes. However, 20 percent of the reasons for cardiovascular diseases are still unknown.

For the study in question, researchers based their analysis on 34 previous studies as well as conducted research on more than two million participants coming from Scandinavia, North America, the Middle East and Asia between the ages of 42 and 77. Pooled analysis of the data revealed that, compared with people who were married, those who weren't (never married, divorced, widowed) were at heightened risk of developing cardiovascular disease (42 percent) and coronary artery heart disease (16 percent).

Not being married was also associated with a heightened risk of dying from both coronary heart diseases by 42 percent and stroke by 55 percent.