There's been a lot of study surrounding the effects of post traumatic stress disorder among men but little for women. Health reporter Erin Billups explains a new study that finds PTSD could be causing long-term health effects for women and filed the following report.

There are twice as many women than men living with Post traumatic stress disorder which is marked by lasting symptoms - like problems sleeping, nightmares, flashbacks of trauma, and being easily startled.

"This ranged from being exposed to a natural disaster, to having physical assault, unwanted sexual contact, and then even the sudden and unexpected death of a loved one," says Jennifer Sumner, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

Sumner led the study conducted through the public health schools at Columbia and Harvard Universities which found that women with PTSD were at higher risk for heart attack and stroke.

"So we found that, compared to women with no trauma exposure, women with elevated levels of PTSD symptoms had about 60 percent higher rates of developing a first onset heart attack or stroke over the course of our study, which spanned about 20 years," she explains.

It included survey data from 50,000 women across the country. It's proof, Sumner says, that PTSD is not solely a mental health problem.

"Currently the American Heart Association does not recognize stress or PTSD as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, and so we're really hoping that our findings can be used to inform different screening measures and prevention efforts," says Sumner.

They also found that trauma alone - with no symptoms of PTSD - also increased cardiovascular risk by almost 50 percent.

Now, Sumner and her colleagues are exploring why the link between trauma and heart disease exists.

"One of the key aspects of PTSD is elevated fear response. So individuals are hyper-vigilant, they're kind of always on the lookout for danger, they're easily startled, and so that kind of physiological response can impact your cardiovascular system in a negative way," says Sumner.

The work was published in Circulation - a journal of the American Heart Association.