WASHINGTON - Severe depression may silently break a seemingly healthy woman's heart.Doctors have long known that depression is common after a heart attack or stroke, and worsens those people's outcomes. Monday, Columbia University researchers reported new evidence that depression can lead to heart disease in the first place.
The scary news gets worse:
The depressed women were more than twice as likely to experience sudden cardiac death — death typically caused by an irregular heartbeat, concluded the 12-year study, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. They also had a smaller increased risk of death from other forms of heart disease.
The big surprise: Sudden cardiac death seemed more closely linked with antidepressant use than with the depression symptoms the women reported.
This is disconcerting to say the least.
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