Why the study?
Do elevated depressive symptoms increase the risk of incident first stroke in Hispanic, African-American, and White older Americans?
Do elevated depressive symptoms increase the risk of incident first stroke in Hispanic, African-American, and White older Americans?
Elevated depressive symptoms are associated with an increased risk of incident stroke across multiple racial and ethnic groups in the US, accounting for approximately 8-10% of first strokes.
Elevated depressive symptoms were associated with stroke risk across groups; hypothesis-generating for targeted interventions.
Although depressive symptoms have been linked to stroke, most research has been in relatively ethnically homogeneous, predominantly white, samples. Using the United States based Health and Retirement Study, we compared the relationships between elevated depressive symptoms and incident first stroke for Hispanic, black, or white/other participants (N = 18,648) and estimated the corresponding Population Attributable Fractions. The prevalence of elevated depressive symptoms was higher in blacks (27%) and Hispanics (33%) than whites/others (18%). Elevated depressive symptoms prospectively predicted stroke risk in the whites/other group (HR = 1.53; 95% CI: 1.36-1.73) and among blacks (HR = 1.31; 95% CI: 1.05-1.65). The HR was similar but only marginally statistically significant among Hispanics (HR = 1.33; 95% CI: 0.92-1.91). The Population Attributable Fraction, indicating the percent of first strokes that would be prevented if the incident stroke rate in those with elevated depressive symptoms was the same as the rate for those without depressive symptoms, was 8.3% for whites/others, 7.8% for blacks, and 10.3% for Hispanics.
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Glymour et al. (2011) studied this question.
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