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Senior Citizen Health & Medicine
Veterans at Higher Risk of Heart Disease with
Certain Personality Traits
By Amy Sutton, Contributing Writer
Health Behavior News Service
 November 25, 2006 - Doctors have long known that
hostility, depression, anxiety and anger have a negative effect on heart
health. Now, a long-term study finds that the combined presence of these
traits makes it more likely that a veteran will experience coronary
heart disease.
The study, published in the November/December issue
of Psychosomatic Medicine, followed 2,105 Air Force veterans who served
in the Vietnam War, with researchers tracking their cardiovascular
health over 17 years, from 1985 to 2002. At the start of the study, none
of the vets showed evidence of coronary heart disease.
Researchers assessed participants hostility,
anxiety and depression when the study began. The men then underwent
periodic physical examinations until 2002.
When researchers evaluated each psychological trait
individually, all were significantly associated with an increased risk
of coronary heart disease, a finding supportive of previous research.
However, in a new twist, they discovered that the
combination of these factors more strongly predicted which participants
would experience coronary heart disease events.
The unique aspect of this study is that it
examined multiple, related psychological attributes that have
individually predicted heart disease in previous studies, said Stephen
Boyle, Ph.D., and Edward Suarez, Ph.D., researchers at Duke University
Medical Center.
The co-occurrence of anger, hostility, anxiety and
depression was the best predictor, Boyle said. It appears that a more
general disposition to experience psychological distress, and negative
affect how a person displays emotions to others increases heart
disease risk, he said.
This increased risk persisted even after
researchers took into account other coronary heart disease risk factors,
such as smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure.
We can predict most coronary heart disease with the classic risk
factors of cholesterol, diabetes, smoking and gender, said Michael
Farkouh, M.D., an associate professor of medicine and cardiology at the
Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
The question is, are there other factors at play?
Why does someone with risk factors have a cardiac incident and someone
else does not? These findings help us understand the precipitants of the
incident, not necessarily the development, Farkouh added.
The next step for researchers is evaluating how
these factors increase heart disease risk.
We are currently exploring the possibility that
chronic psychological distress and negative affect increase the risk for
heart disease by elevating levels of other risk factors, such as
inflammation and lipids, over time, Boyle said.
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