Depression May Boost Stroke Risk in Middle-Aged Women, Too

After eliminating some of the other factors that increase the risk of stroke, depressed women still were 1.9 times more likely to have a stroke, compared to women who were not depressed, they found.

Risk factors included: age; socioeconomic status; lifestyle habits such as smoking, alcohol and physical activity; and high blood pressure, heart disease, being overweight and diabetes.

Jackson noted that in absolute terms the risk for women in this age group having a stroke is still small.

In the study, about 1.5 percent of all women had a stroke, and it increased to slightly more than 2 percent among women with depression, she noted.

While the study tied depression to increased stroke risk, it did not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.

According to Jackson, this is the first large study that looked at the association between depression and stroke in younger middle-aged women.

In the United States, another long-running study on women's health -- the Nurses' Health Study -- found a 30 percent higher risk of stroke among depressed women. The average age of women in that study, however, was 14 years older, Jackson said.

The compelling evidence of an association between depression and stroke, "reinforce the need for adequate targeted prevention, detection and control of poor mental health among mid-aged women," Jackson said.

And since the reasons for association aren't known, "we need to carry out further research to identify the mechanism by which depression affects stroke risk, since this may have implications for development of future treatment of depression and stroke prevention strategies," she said.

SOURCES: Caroline Jackson, Ph.D., epidemiologist, School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Australia; Ralph Sacco, M.D., past president, American Heart Association, and chairman, neurology, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine; May 16, 2013, Stroke

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Published: May 2013