By Karla Gale Fri Mar 9, 2:51 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Heart disease, diabetes, and depression can be a deadly combination, according results of a study that suggest that, in people with coronary artery disease, the presence of diabetes or depression increases the risk of dying from heart disease.
The risk is even higher when both diabetes and severe depression are present, investigators reported today at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in Budapest, Hungary.
Dr. Lana L. Watkins and her associates at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina studied 907 patients with coronary artery disease, which occurs when the arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle (coronary arteries) become hardened and narrowed.
A total of 325 of the patients also had type 2 diabetes. All of the study subjects were assessed for depression using a standard 21-item inventory.
During more than four years the patients were followed, 135 patients died.
The researchers found that depression and diabetes were both associated with increased death, independent of age, gender, body weight, and heart function.
Among diabetics with coronary artery disease, having severe symptoms of depression further increased the risk by roughly 25 percent, the investigators report.
However, the investigators were surprised to find that mild depression did not affect survival, Watkins noted.
"The bottom line is that the excess risk is confined to diabetic patients with coronary artery disease and moderate-to-severe depression," Watkins said.