Depression can boost risks for coronary
heart disease, especially in younger individuals, a new
Swedish study shows.
Researchers reviewed data on nearly
45,000 patients admitted to a hospital for depression
and found that 1,916 of them developed coronary heart
disease (CHD). The researchers calculated that across
all age and gender groups, people diagnosed with depression
were 1.5 times more likely to develop coronary heart disease
than people who hadn't been diagnosed with depression.
Depressed individuals in the youngest age group in the
study, 25 to 39 years old, were three times more likely
to develop coronary heart disease.
"The present study showed that young to middle aged people
hospitalized for depression had a high risk of developing
CHD. Primary healthcare teams meet patients with depression,
and it is important that they treat depression as an additional
individual and independent CHD factor," concluded the
researchers from the Karolinska Institute, in Huddinge.
"Patients with clinical depression should be given not
only short-term treatment, but also maintenance therapy
to prevent relapses and recurrences of depression," they
wrote in the December issue of the American Journal
of Preventive Medicine.
