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NEW YORK, Mar 15 (Reuters Health) - Elderly individuals with symptoms of depression face a much higher risk of dying from heart disease than do similar individuals who are not depressed, results of a study suggest.
The link between depression and death is not new. In fact, earlier studies demonstrated a doubling to quadrupling of death rates in depressed patients hospitalized after a heart attack compared with nondepressed patients, according to Dr. Brenda Penninx and associates from Vrije University in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Whether this holds true in general for elderly individuals had not been explored, the study authors explain, so they followed a group of nearly 3,000 elderly men and women over a 4-year period to determine whether minor symptoms of depression or full-blown (major) depression affected the rates of death from heart disease.
Among those who started the study without signs of heart disease, minor depression increased the risk of dying from heart disease by 50%, even taking into account other risk factors, such as smoking, drinking, high blood pressure and diabetes, the report in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry indicates.
For individuals with major depression, the risk was increased even more. According to the results, their risk of dying from heart disease was triple that of their nondepressed counterparts.
Not unexpectedly, depression also increased the death rates in people already diagnosed with heart disease, the authors note. Minor depression increased their heart-disease death rate by 60%, whereas major depression tripled the risk of dying from heart disease.
"Our results show that minor depression and, most strongly, major depression place both community-dwelling (heart) patients and persons free of (heart) disease at an increased risk (of dying from heart disease)," Penninx and colleagues write.
"Prevention and treatment of depression may be one of the most effective targets for interventions aimed at reducing the risk for fatal (heart) events," the researchers conclude.
SOURCE: Archives of General Psychiatry 2001;58:221-227.
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