Depression common in young women after heart attack
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Compared with men and older patients, women under the age of 60 who have had a heart attack have an increased risk of developing depression, according to a new report in this week’s issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the community setting, depression is known to be especially prevalent among younger women - it is also known that symptoms of depression often occur after a heart attack. However, it was unclear if younger women who are hospitalized for a heart attack have higher risk of depression.
To investigate, Dr. Susmita Mallik, from Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, and colleagues analyzed information for a total of 2,498 heart attack patients who were treated at 1 of 19 centers in the United States between January 2003 and June 2004. Depression, which was assessed during hospitalization, was defined as a score of at least 10 on the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders Brief Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ).
The average PHQ score for patients 60 years of age or younger was 6.4—significantly higher than the 5.0 score in older patients. Also, women had an average score of 6.8, while men had a score of 5.2. The highest average PHQ score among the younger women was 8.2.
Forty percent of younger women had depression, the report indicates. The rate in younger men, 22 percent, was just slightly higher than the 21-percent rate in older women. Older men had the lowest prevalence of depression, at 15 percent.
Compared with older men, younger women were 3.1-times more likely to be depressed, the results of a more extensive analysis showed.
Although additional study is needed to explore the reasons for these differences, in the meantime doctors should be aware that younger women have a higher susceptibility for depression after a heart attack, the authors note. Therefore, screening for depression in younger women who have had a heart attack “should be particularly aggressive.”
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, April 24, 2006.
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