Science has found many links between depression and other serious medical illnesses, such as cancer, stroke, diabetes, and heart disease. For example, people who develop depression following a heart attack (myocardial infarction) or chest pain (angina) have an elevated risk of cardiac death or hospital readmission over the following year.
In a new study scheduled for publication in the October 15th issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers report that only episodes of depression that commenced after the coronary event were associated with increased cardiac-related morbidity and mortality, but that this increased risk was substantial.
The authors recruited patients hospitalized for ACS, and evaluated them for both lifetime and current depression. Patients were then followed for one year, with additional assessments of depression and cardiac health. Specifically, they discovered that cardiovascular outcome was not associated with prior or existing depression at the time of hospitalization. In contrast, even after controlling for traditional cardiac risk factors such as age, gender, and smoking status, depression that developed in the month after the ACS event increased the odds of cardiac readmission or death by 7 times.