Stress Disorders: How Do They Affect Cardiovascular Risk?

Having a stress-related psychiatric disorder, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), acute stress reaction, and adjustment disorder, is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, according to the results of a recent study.

While previous research has indicated a role of stress reactions in cardiovascular risk, many studies have focused on male veterans with PTSD.

Read More...
Stress Response Disrupted in Schizophrenia
Does Stress Increase the Risk for Autoimmune Diseases?

For their study, the researchers used data from the Swedish National Patient Register to examine the associations between stress related disorders and subsequent cardiovascular disease risk. Their population based, sibling-controlled cohort study included 136,637 patients with stress related disorders from 1987 to 2013, as well as 171,314 unaffected full siblings of the patients and 1,366,370 matched controls from the general population.

Overall, they found that the crude incidence rate of any cardiovascular disease was 10.5, 8.4, and 6.9 per 1000 person years among patients with stress disorders, their siblings, and controls, respectively.

The hazard ratio (HR) for any cardiovascular disease was 1.64 in sibling-based comparisons, with the highest HR observed for heart failure (6.95) during the first year following diagnosis of a stress disorder. After 1 year, HRs became lower, and ranged from 1.12 for arrhythmia to 2.02 for artery thrombosis/embolus. Analyses using matched controls yielded similar results.

“Stress related disorders are robustly associated with multiple types of cardiovascular disease, independently of familial background, history of somatic/psychiatric diseases, and psychiatric comorbidity,” the researchers concluded.

—Michael Potts

Reference:

Song H, Fang F, Arnberg FK, et al. Stress related disorders and risk of cardiovascular disease: population based, sibling controlled cohort study [published online April 10, 2019]. BMJ. doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l1255.