It has been accepted that depression and heart disease are closely linked and that either may be a causal factor in the other. Now an article in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association, has dotted the Is and made the link between abuse and heart problems.
The link between adverse childhood experiences and heart disease seems to be forged more by psychological factors than traditional risk factors (smoking parents etc), lead author Dr Maxia Dong, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues suggest.
Their findings are based on an analysis of survey data from 17,337 adult health plan members collected between 1995 and 1997. Two weeks after their medical history was recorded, the subjects were sent a questionnaire regarding adverse childhood experiences and health-related behaviors from adolescence through adulthood.
Of the 10 types of adverse childhood experiences investigated, 9 were found to increase the risk of heart disease. The increased risks ranged from 1.7-fold for emotional abuse and crime within the household to 1.3-fold for emotional neglect and substance abuse within the household. Strage as it may seem parental marital discord was the only adverse childhood experience not tied to an elevated risk of heart disease.
As one might expect as the number of adverse childhood experiences increased, so did the risk of heart disease. For example, the presence of just one adverse childhood experience had a relatively mild effect on risk, whereas having seven or more nearly quadrupled the risk.
In fact what the study showed was that psychological factors were a more powerful predictor of heart disease than things which we generally associate with cardiac problems with the single exception of obesity.
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