Take note, Steelers and Packers fans: a new study suggests that watching your home team lose the Super Bowl could be stressful enough to trigger a heart attack.

The new research shows that cardiac deaths can jump by 15 per cent in the hometown of the losing team in the days after the big game. But when the home team wins, heart-related deaths fall.

The researchers involved in the study, led by Dr. Robert Kloner of Good Samaritan Hospital and the University of Southern California, have studied this phenomenon before.

In 2009, they published a similar study by collecting death certificate data from L.A. County for January and February, looking at the days after the Super Bowl.

They found that the total number of deaths in L.A. after the home team lost the Super Bowl in 1980 to the Pittsburgh Steelers rose by about 17 per cent compared to post-Super Bowl periods that did not involve the local team. Deaths related to heart and circulatory issues rose 22 per cent.

They also found that after the L.A. Rams beat the Washington Redskins in the Super Bowl in 1984, there was a slight decrease in deaths.

For this study, published in the journal Clinical Cardiology, the researchers re-analyzed the death records with a new focus.

"The new data really focuses on demographics. So we looked at age, gender and race," Kloner told CTV's Canada AM Monday from L.A.

"We found an increase in cardiac deaths of about 15 per cent in men, but to our surprise, there was a 27 per cent increase in cardiac deaths in women associated with that loss."

Conversely, after the L.A. Raiders' 1984 win against the Washington Redskins, there was a dip in cardiac deaths on average, compared with non-Super Bowl years.

Kloner says there could be a number of potential factors that might account for the high number of women's deaths. One of them could be that women are sports fans too and the tension of the game hits them just as hard.

"We know that there's an emotional connection between sports fans and their teams. I think this is true in women and I think it's true in men," he said.

"Another possibility – and it's just a theory – is that men's reactions to a loss is very negative or very angry. It's possible that that negative reaction could spill over and affect the emotional state of the female partner," Kloner added.

The researchers also noted that older people over the age of 65 saw a 22 per cent in cardiac and circulatory-related deaths -- a much bigger spike than observed in younger sports fans. But there we no statistically significant differences between various races.

Kloner points out that the 1980 game and the 1984 game differed not just because of who eventually won, but because of the intensity of each game.

"L.A.'s 1980 Super Bowl loss was a very intense game, with seven lead changes. In the 1984 game, L.A. was ahead pretty much all the way. It was a less intense game. So that may be important," Kloner said.

Previous studies have noted before that sports fans with weak hearts may be at an increased risk of a heart attack while watching important matches.

In 2008, German researchers tracking cardiac emergencies during the 2006 World Cup of Soccer reported that on the days when Germany played, the rate of heart attacks, angina attacks or cardiac arrhythmias was 2.66 higher than the norm.

Physicians noted after that study that actually watching the big game may be just one factor contributing to the stress placed on the hearts of sports fans. The parties that typically surround the event usually involve alcohol, which could also stress the heart, they noted.

Kloner says sports fans with weak hearts should be aware of the risks of watching the big game.

"Physicians and patients should be aware that stressful games might elicit an emotional response that could trigger a cardiac event," he said in a statement.

"Stress reduction programs or certain medications might be appropriate in individual cases."