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A recent study found that people with multiple depressive symptoms have an increased risk of stroke.
The study, recently published in the journal Neurology: Clinical Practice, and led by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, showed that those who scored higher on a test designed to measure symptoms of depression had a higher risk of stroke than those with lower scores.
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The study included 9,529 black participants and 14,516 white participants, all without a stroke and aged 45 or older. Enrolled in the REGARDS study, a long-term, population-based study designed to examine risk factors associated with ethnic and regional disparities in stroke incidence and mortality.
Symptoms of depression were assessed using the four-point depression scale test, known as CES-D-4.
The four-item scale assesses a subset of symptoms and rates the number of times respondents have felt depressed, sad, lonely or crying.
A total of 1,262 stroke cases were recorded over a mean nine-year follow-up in the study group. Compared with participants without symptoms of depression, participants who scored 1 to 3 on the CES-D-4 test had a 39% increased risk of stroke.
Participants with a CES-D-4 score of 4 had a 54% risk of stroke. There was no evidence of a differential effect by race.
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“There are a number of known risk factors for stroke, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, but we are starting to understand that there are non-traditional risk factors as well,” he said. said Dr Virginia Howard, professor in the epidemiology department of the School of Public Health at Abhouse University. The emergence of depressive symptoms is on this list. “
One of the goals of the study was to find out whether symptoms of depression could explain the increased risk of stroke in the black population, particularly in the southern United States.
“Conventional risk factors do not explain all the difference in stroke risk between the sexes. Results were mixed between the few studies that recorded black participants and looked at the racial and depressive symptoms associated with stroke, ”said Dr. Alexandra Ford, of the Capstone School of Nursing at the University of Alabama and co-author of the study. “Black patients are less likely to receive effective care and management, and depression often goes neither detected nor diagnosed.”
She added: “These results indicate that more research should be done to explore non-traditional risk factors for stroke. The implications of our results confirm the importance of assessing this risk factor in both groups.”
Source: medicalxpress
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