The recent health study reveal that the negative changes in health behaviours are a major reason for the increased risk of cardiovascular events such as heart attack among heart patients with depression. The study was conducted by U.S. researchers on 1,017 outpatients with stable coronary heart disease for an average of 4.8 years.
Depression has been identified as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease in healthy people for past long years and for recurrent events in patients with cardiovascular disease. But the association between the both was not clear.

Dr. Mary A. Whooley, of the VA Medical Centre in San Francisco, under whom the study was conducted, along with her colleagues used a questionnaire to measure the heart disease patients’ symptoms of depression. Various models were used to evaluate the connection between subsequent cardiovascular events including heart failure, heart attack, stroke, depression, disease severity at the start of the study, and biological and behavioural factors.

The study conducted by the American researchers revealed that patients with depression had a 50 percent greater risk of cardiovascular events. When the doctors adjusted for other existing conditions and cardiac disease severity, it was found that depression is associated with a 31 percent increased risk of cardiovascular events.
Dr. Whooley and her colleagues further went ahead with their research on certain health behaviours, including physical inactivity, and found there no longer exist a significant association between depression and cardiovascular events.

The study concludes that heart patients with depression are less likely to follow dietary, exercise and medication recommendations; where as poor health behaviours can cause cardiovascular events.  The study is published in the Nov. 26 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“Dr. Whooley says in her book that understanding the way depression causes cardiovascular events is necessary for developing interventions to decrease the excess cardiovascular morbidity and mortality related with depression.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 21st, 2008 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Cardio Vascular Disease. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.