Genetic predisposition to depression increases CVD risk in women, but not men
Depression is associated with a heightened risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) among women, according to new data published in Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine.[1] The same trend is not seen in men.
The study’s authors focused on three different major psychiatric disorders: major depression (MD), bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia.
“Few studies have investigated the sex differences in the cardiovascular comorbidity of schizophrenia and BD, and observational studies have presented inconsistent findings on the sex-specific association between depression and CVD outcomes,” wrote first author Jiayue-Clara Jiang, PhD, with the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland in Australia, and colleagues.
Jiang et al. examined U.K. Biobank data from more than 345,000 patients, focused on MD, BD and schizophrenia may impact a patient’s long-term risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AFib), coronary artery disease or heart failure.
Overall, polygenic scores showed that patients with a higher genetic risk of MD were associated with an increased risk of AFib, coronary artery disease, and heart failure. No such connections were identified for patients with a higher genetic risk of BD or schizophrenia.
The group did a mediation analysis in search of traditional CVD risk factors that could explain this relationship between MD and CVD in women, including why it is not also seen in men. While they did find that baseline body mass index, hypercholesterolemia, hypertension and smoking were linked to the presence of CVD in certain patients, they emphasized that “these risk factors did not explain the higher risk compared to men.”
In addition, researchers determined that the relationship between a higher genetic risk of MD and CVD were still in place when only focused on patients who had never been officially diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and were not on any specific psychiatric medications. This helped confirm that changed behaviors as a result of receiving a MD diagnosis were not responsible for this trend.
"Our findings highlight the need for studies focused on understanding sex-specific drivers of CVD risk in the presence of depression to inform the development of risk predictors and prevention strategies in the context of comorbidity,” the authors wrote. “Furthermore, our findings underscore the importance of effective implementation of CVD screening in females with a predisposition to, or diagnosis of depression.”
Click here to read the full study in Circulation: Genomic and Precision Medicine, an American Heart Association/American Stroke Association journal.
Michael has more than 18 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.