Rate of CVD in Mid-Adulthood Increased for Women With Perinatal Depression

WEDNESDAY, June 19, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Women with perinatal depression (PND) have an elevated long-term risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a study published online June 18 in the European Heart Journal.

Donghao Lu, Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and colleagues conducted a nationwide population-based matched cohort study involving 55,539 women diagnosed with PND during 2001 to 2014 and 545,567 unaffected matched women to examine the long-term risk for CVD.

The researchers found that 6.4 and 3.7 percent of women with PND and unaffected women, respectively, developed CVD during the follow-up of up to 20 years. Women with PND had a significantly higher risk for developing CVD compared with matched unaffected women (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.36) and compared with their sisters (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.20). Women without a history of psychiatric disorder had the most pronounced results. The association was seen for all CVD subtypes, with the highest hazard ratios for hypertensive disease, ischemic heart disease, and heart failure (hazard ratios, 1.50, 1.37, and 1.36, respectively).

“Although familial factors may partly play a role here, our findings lend support to the ongoing discussion on factoring in reproductive history, including PND, for CVD risk assessment and prediction in women,” the authors write.

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