Editorials - Lubbock Online.com Harm To The Heart

Published: Saturday, July 18, 1998






The editorials represent the opinion of the





Harm To The Heart

MEDICAL RESEARCHERS HAVE known for years that depression and stress are detrimental to health. Numerous studies have confirmed the connection.

However, a newly reported study by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine offers the strongest evidence yet that clinical depression causes heart disease.

The study involved 1,190 male medical students who were enrolled at the medical school between 1948 and 1964. Researchers followed the health of the subjects for 40 years and included analyses of cholesterol and blood pressure measurements.

The men who reported at least one episode of clinical depression during the years of follow-up study were twice as likely as those who reported no depression to suffer a heart attack or coronary artery disease.

The scientists who were involved in the study do not know why there is a connection between depression and heart problems, but some believe that the answer is stress hormones, which are higher in depressed people.

Another possible reason is that depressed people suffer blood clots more frequently than do people who do not have a problem with depression.

If untreated clinical depression can harm coronary arteries, does it follow that treating depression can reduce the risk of heart attack? That would be a logical conclusion, but it would not necessarily be a medical sound one. More research will be needed before researchers can answer the question.

About 9.5 percent of Americans - almost one person in ten - suffers from clinical depression during the average year. The depression not only takes away from the quality of their lives, it apparently shortens the lives of some of them.


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