Depression May Cause Higher Risk of Stroke
There have been 28 studies related to the link between depression and stroke. So far researchers were able to estimate that there will be 106 extra cases of stroke per 100,000 depressed people; 22 of those cases were reported to be fatal.
The study, however, has its limitations. An Pan, a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, shared that the biggest problem is that no one knows what causes the link between depression and stroke.
One theory is that people who are depressed may tend to smoke more and exercise less. Pan, however, also found that people who took antidepressants seemed to have a higher risk of stroke when compared against than those who did not take the drugs.
Pan told Reuters Health: “These medications could be one possible reason for the increased risk of stroke in depression and the majority of studies did not control for this.”
“The current data on whether medications have an independent role (in stroke) is not clear at this moment,” Pan said further. However, he is worried about the fact that taking antidepressants mean that one is suffering from severe depression, which can account for the extra risk.
The apparent link between depression and stroke costs 137,000 Americans their lives a year.
The results of the study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They were based on data collected from more than 317,000 people who were followed for 2 to 29 years.
Tags: dangers of depression, depressed stroke, Depression, risk of stroke
