Hai Phong

In a 3-year study of 5,000 patients with moderate or severe depression, those treated with antidepressants seemed to show lower rates of death, coronary artery thuoc tri ung thu disease and stroke than those who did not take the drugs.
[depressed looking man in hospital bed]
Treating a traditional cardiovascular risk factor did not add to the heart benefit that seemed to be gained from tackling moderate to severe depression.

The association appeared to be stronger for treating more severe cases of depression than was the effect of using statin drugs to reduce cardiovascular risk, say the doctors from the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, UT.

Details of their questionnaire study - finding 5,311 people, or 20%, affected by the mental health problem among a total of over 26,000 patients treated by the center over 3 years - will be presented by the researchers at this month's annual conference of the American College of Cardiology.

The 20% had moderate or severe depression while the remaining 21,517 patients did not show depression against a 9-question depression screen, or only mild depression.

The screening assessment tool asked about factors such as mood, sleep and appetite to gauge the level of depression.

Lead author, Heidi May PhD, a public health scientist, says:

"This study demonstrates the importance of best fucoidanevaluating patients for depression, not only in terms of improving their mood, but reducing their risk for heart disease."

In the analysis of rates of death, coronary artery disease and stroke versus levels of depression and its treatment showed that patients with moderate to severe depression who were taking antidepressants had a lower risk of the three events during the study period. This was compared with patients with the same level of depression but not taking antidepressants or statins.

"Antidepressants were not associated with a reduced cardiovascular risk in people with little or no depression, but in moderately to severely depressed people, antidepressants were shown to significantly improve cardiovascular outcomes," Dr. May says.

The results also suggested there was a greater protective effect from treating the more severe depressio