Can a Bad Boss Make You Sick?('s report adjusted their statistics to t...),Health

What about women? There weren't enough heart-attack cases over the 10-year follow-up period for the researchers to consider how bosses affected female workers' heart health, Nyberg said. But the trends around sick leave applied to both genders, she said.

One expert thought the findings had merit.

Dr. Redford Williams, director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Duke University in Durham, N.C., said stress at work -- such as that caused by a boss with poor leadership skills -- "arouses the body's fight/flight response, causing changes in stress hormones that increase blood pressure, inflammatory cytokines, blood glucose levels, even makes platelets stickier and more likely to clot."

Over time, this can increase blockages in the arteries and lead to heart attacks and strokes, he said.

In general, Williams said, "it's still safe to conclude that poor leadership has the potential to adversely affect the health of the led. It's likely that there are differences in how sensitive different persons are to these effects, but still clear that poor leadership is bad for health."

More information

There's more on the effects of stress at the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

SOURCES: Anna Nyberg, researcher, Karolinska Institute, Solna, Sweden; Redford Williams, M.D., director, Behavioral Medicine Research Center, professor, psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Duke University, Durham, N.C.; Thesis, Anna Nyberg, 2009