Depression A Risk Factor For Heart Attack In Hypertensive Patients, For Atherosclerosis In Women.

2001 APR 5 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Two papers published in the March/April 2001 issue of Psychosomatic Medicine highlight the impact of mental health on heart disease risk.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and depression is the most prevalent psychological disorder.

Hillel W. Cohen, DrPH, and associates of the Department of Epidemiology and Social Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York, report that hypertensive patients with a history of depression are more than twice as likely to have a heart attack or other coronary event than non-depressed people with high blood pressure.

"Because much remains to be known about both these conditions, further assessment of the association between the two could lead to a better understanding of the etiology of both and possibly new preventive interventions," say Cohen et al.

After adjusting for heart attack risk factors, such as age, cholesterol, diabetes, and smoking, the depressed patients were still more than twice as likely to have a heart attack than their non depressed peers. That number rose to nearly 2.5 times as likely when cardiac procedures such as bypass surgery or angioplasty were taken into account.

In contrast, the incidence of hospitalizations or death from health problems not related to heart disease was similar in depressed and non-depressed patients.

The study included 5,564 patients being treated for hypertension but without a history of heart disease. Of 3,541 men in the study, 3.5% reported having received treatment for depression and 6.4% of the 2,023 women had been treated for depression. These percentages are consistent with the numbers seen in other research.