强烈推荐备考的同学来听这一篇，VOA健康报道“心碎综合症”

小白老师说：VOA慢速慢吗？我真的不忍心告诉你，其实医博英语考试的真题速度和VOA慢速相当，甚至更慢！尤其是2016年的真题。所以不要瞧不起VOA慢速。

今天这篇听力来自 VOA 健康报道，无论是篇幅字数，还是题材内容、语音语速，都是医博英语考试长对话训练的绝佳之选。

可能的生词都做了备注。小白老师诚意推荐。

请点击下方条形框播放音频

听力原文

Dying of a broken heart sounds like the ending of a romantic story. But it actually happens. The “broken heart syndrome,” usually affects people who have received very bad news. Recently, however, researchers discovered that even joyful events can kill you.

“Broken heart syndrome” is officially called Takotsubo syndrome（Takotsubo，应激性） or TTS. It involves the sudden weakening of heart muscles. This weakening causes the left ventricle （心室）to expand abnormally at the bottom. If you remember from health class, the left ventricle is the chamber （室，腔）of the heart that pushes oxygen-rich blood through the body.

The symptoms of Takotsubo syndrome are acute （急性）chest pain and shortness of breath. The syndrome can lead to heart attacks and death.

Even though Takotsubo syndrome is fairly rare, the scientific community has studied how unexpected emotional shocks can cause a heart attack. These shocks are usually unpleasant, such as the death of a spouse（配偶）or a violent argument.

However, no one had ever investigated whether an extremely happy event could give the same result. Until now.

In 2011, a pair of researchers in Switzerland set up a global registry （注册表）to track cases of the syndrome. Christian Templin and Jelena Ghadri are both with University Hospital Zurich.

Five years later, their registry involves a network of 25 hospitals spread across nine countries. They had collected data on 1,750 cases of the Takotsubo syndrome. This number of cases -- 1,750 -- is said to be “statistically significant”（统计学意义） by scientific communities.

For the study, Templin and Ghadri led a team of 16 researchers. The team found that emotional shocks caused 485 of those 1,750 cases. And within that group of 485, a total of 20 people could be said to have suffered from “happy heart syndrome.”

In an interview, Ghardi said that the researchers have shown that the causes for TTS are more varied than previously thought. The disease can be caused by positive emotions, too.

The events that caused the 20 cases of “happy heart syndrome” include a birthday party, a wedding, a surprise farewell （告别） celebration, a favorite team winning a game, and the birth of a grandchild. However, none of these cases of “happy heart syndrome” caused death.

Ghadri and her team published their findings in the European Heart Journal.

So what is the important take-away from this study?

Emergency room doctors should be aware of the fact that patients with signs of heart attack could be suffering from TTS. And these TTS cases could be caused by either positive or negative experiences.

Another interesting take-away is that TTS affects mostly women.

For reasons the researchers do not yet understand, 95 percent of the patients in both the “broken heart” and “happy heart” groups are women. These women are mostly in their mid-to-late-60s.

Ghadri said she and her team still do not know why women are mostly affected by the Takotsubo syndrome.

The fact that more women than men are affected by Takotsubo syndrome is even stranger when you consider that heart attacks are more common among men.

The researchers suspect that the hormone estrogen （雌激素）may play a part in how the disease operates. Women have much higher levels of estrogen than men. In men, testosterone （睾酮） is the dominant （主导的） hormone.

Happy and sad life events are, of course, very different. Further studies are also needed to figure out if both events share the same pathway in the central nervous system for causing Takotsubo syndrome.

Japanese researchers discovered the condition. They named it after a traditional Japanese octopus 章鱼 trap. An enlarged heart suffering from Takotsubo syndrome looks like an octopus trap.

I’m Anna Matteo.

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