Depression is a clinically significant risk factor for developing coronary heart disease, especially in men and women aged 25–50, according to an analysis of a national family database at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm.
Data from the family coronary heart disease (CHD) database at the institute were used to identify all people in Sweden aged 25–64 at the onset of depression, and aged 25–79 at the onset of nonfatal CHD from 1987 to 2001, reported Jan Sunquist, Ph.D., and colleagues from the Center for Family and Community Medicine, Huddinge, Sweden (Am. J. Prev. Med. 2005;29:428–33).
Significant standardized incidence ratio (SIR) for CHD in depressive patients was greatest in the 25–39 age group in both men (SIR = 2.97) and women (SIR = 3.04) and remained significant after adjustment for socioeconomic status in all age groups for both men and women—except for those in the 70–79 age group.
Two groups of patients were compared from the larger database. The first group studied had been hospitalized for depression, followed by CHD hospitalization (n = 1,916). The second group only had been hospitalized for nonfatal CHD (n = 425,495). Both depression and CHD had to be diagnosed based on World Health Organization ICD criteria.
The researchers believe that their results have important clinical implications for preventive care. “Primary health care teams meet patients with depression, and it is important that they treat depression as an individual and independent CHD risk factor,” the researchers wrote.