Depression and Cardiac Mortality
Why the study?
Does depression increase the risk of cardiac mortality in community-dwelling older adults with and without baseline cardiac disease?
Population
2847 community-dwelling men and women aged 55 to 85 years, including 450 subjects with a diagnosis of…
Comparison
Major depression or minor depression vs Nondepressed subjects
Design
Cohort
Follow-up
4 years
Authors
Discussion
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Implication
Depression warrants clinical attention as a cardiac mortality risk marker in older adults; extends prior associations to community cohorts with and without baseline disease.
Key Points
- This study aims to examine how depression affects cardiac mortality in individuals with and without pre-existing cardiac disease.
- Evaluated a cohort of 2847 adults aged 55 to 85 over 4 years.
- Defined major depression using DSM-III criteria; minor depression using CES-D scores of 16 or higher.
- Analyzed the effects separately in patients with and without cardiac disease, adjusting for various confounding factors.
- Cardiac patients with minor depression had a relative risk of 1.6 for cardiac mortality (95% CI, 1.0-2.7).
- Cardiac patients with major depression had a relative risk of 3.0 (95% CI, 1.1-7.8).
- For individuals without cardiac disease, the relative risks for minor and major depression were 1.5 (95% CI, 0.9-2.6) and 3.9 (95% CI, 1.4-10.9), respectively.
Structured PICO
Does depression increase the risk of cardiac mortality in community-dwelling older adults with and without baseline cardiac disease?
P
Population
2847 community-dwelling men and women aged 55 to 85 years, including 450 subjects with a diagnosis of cardiac disease and 2397 subjects without cardiac disease
I
Intervention
Major depression (defined by DSM-III criteria) or minor depression (defined by Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale scores of 16 or higher)
C
Comparator
Nondepressed subjects (with and without cardiac disease)
O
Outcome
Cardiac mortalityhard clinical
Both major and minor depression are associated with an increased risk of subsequent cardiac mortality in older adults, regardless of whether they have pre-existing cardiac disease.
Cite This Study
Penninx et al. (2001) studied this question.