Depression Elevates Stroke Risk
Depression has been linked to increases in medical problems such as cardiovascular disease. A new study shows that depression is linked to increased risk of stroke, even when symptoms of depression are in remission.
The 2015 study, by Paola Gilsanz and colleagues in the Journal of the American Heart Association, focused on health and retirement. It included over 16,000 adults aged 50 and up who were interviewed every two years about their health history.
Previous studies have shown a link between depression and stroke risk. Like those studies, the study by Gilsanz and colleagues found that people who were depressed during two consecutive interviews were more than twice as likely to have a stroke in the subsequent two-year period than those who reported few depressive symptoms in the first two visits.
What is new is that in this study, people who were depressed in the first interview but not in the second interview were still at 66% greater risk for a stroke than those with no depression. Those who were depressed only during the second interview not at greater risk for a stroke, implying that depression takes more than two years to affect stroke risk.
Gilsanz and colleagues suggest that they don’t know how depression, remission, and stroke risk interact over the longer term. It is possible that stroke risk diminishes the longer a patient’s depression stays in remission.
It is not clear why depression increases strokes, though some have speculated that depression causes irregular heartbeats. There is not as yet any support for that theory, but high blood pressure, rigid veins, or sticky platelets may be other explanations.
