Heart Care Info - Heart Disease Prevention & Treatment

Depression and History of Attempted Suicide as Risk Factors for Heart Disease Mortality in Young Individuals

AJ Shah, E Veledar, Y Hong... - Archives of General ..., 2011 - Am Med Assoc Objectives We sought to determine the association of unipolar and bipolar depression and a history of attempted suicide with mortality due to ischemic heart disease (IHD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in young US adults and to examine potential sex ...

Via interview, information was obtained on age, sex, years of education, self-identified race, ethnicity, family income, cigarette use, alcohol consumption, cocaine use, leisure-time physical activity during the preceding month, medication use, and medical history. Blood pressure was determined by the average of 3 measurements in the examination centers and 3 measurements during the interview. Hypercholesterolemia was defined as a total cholesterol level of more than 240 mg/d L (to convert to millimoles per liter, multiply by 0.0259); obesity, as a body mass index of at least 30 (calculated as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared); and hypertension, as a blood pressure of at least 140/90 mm Hg and/or current administration of antihypertensives. Total and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels were measured using commonly available reagents (catalogue No. 816302 from Boehringer Mannheim, Indianapolis, Indiana). Binge drinking was quantified as the number of days in the past year when the respondent drank 5 or more drinks per day and was analyzed as a continuous measure. A person was considered inactive if he or she did not do any leisure-time physical activity. Socioeconomic status was determined by the poverty to income ratio, which is the ratio of the midpoint of the observed family income category to the official poverty threshold, scaled to family size; it was analyzed as a continuous variable. Years of education was also analyzed as a continuous variable. A person was considered to have a lifetime history of smoking if he or she had smoked 100 or more cigarettes in his or her lifetime. Because race/ethnicity was associated with CVD and overall mortality in previous studies, we included variables for white non-Hispanic, black non-Hispanic, and Mexican-American race or ethnicity in the analyses.15 Use of antidepressants was not included as a risk factor because only 5.72% of those with depression or a history of attempted suicide reported such use, and no CVD events occurred in that subgroup.