Psychological distress and risk of peripheral vascular disease, abdominal aortic aneurysm, and heart failure: Pooling of sixteen cohort studies

Abstract

ObjectivesExamine the little-tested relation of psychological distress with peripheral vascular disease, abdominal aortic aneurysm, and heart failure. MethodsPooling of raw data from 166,631 male and female participants in 16 UK-based cohort studies. Psychological distress was measured using the 12-item General Health Questionnaire. Peripheral vascular disease, abdominal aortic aneurysm, and heart failure events were based on death register linkage. ResultsDuring a mean follow-up 9.5 years there were 17,368 deaths of which 8625 were cardiovascular disease-related. Relative to the asymptomatic group (0 score), the highly distressed group (score 7–12) experienced an elevated risk of peripheral vascular disease (adjusted hazard ratio; 95% confidence interval: 3.39; 1.97, 5.82) and heart failure (1.76; 1.37, 2.26). Psychological distress was weakly related to the risk of death from abdominal aortic aneurysm. As anticipated, distress was associated with cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, and all strokes combined. ConclusionsIn the present study, we provide new evidence of mental health-related cardiovascular disease presentations.