A new study in Heart says a combination of depression and heart disease is far more lethal than either one of those condition alone.

Depressed people are more likely to die from all causes so it's difficult to narrow down whether or not depressed people with heart disease are at greater risk and people who who are depressed, but otherwise healthy, have been shown to be more likely to develop coronary heart disease, irrespective of what other risk factors they might have. 

Depression is clearly the common factor.   The authors base their findings on just under 6,000 middle aged adults, whose mental and physical health were tracked for an average of five and a half years, participating in the British Whitehall II study, which is evaluating the impact of social and economic factors on the long term health of around 10,000 civil servants, aged between 35 and 55 in 1985.

Around one in seven of the 6,000 (14.9%) scored highly on a depressive symptom scale. And one in five (20%) of those with established heart disease were depressed compared with one in seven (14%) of those without heart problems.

During the five and a half year monitoring period, 170 people died. Heart attack or stroke accounted for 47 of these deaths.

Those with coronary heart disease alone were 67% more likely to die of all causes, while those who were depressed, but otherwise healthy, were twice as likely to do so as those who had neither condition.

But those who were both depressed and had heart disease were almost five times as likely to die as their mentally and physically healthy peers.

After taking account of age and sex, and other relevant influential factors, the combination of depression and heart disease tripled the risk of death from all causes and quadrupled the risk of dying from a heart attack or a stroke.

The biological explanations for the impact of depression on the risk of death are still not clear, say the authors, but may involve stimulating the inflammatory process and/or clot formation, or altering cellular responses and/or the metabolism of blood fats. Behavioural factors might also play a part, they add.

In the meantime, the results emphasize "the need for healthcare professionals to pay more attention to depression in their cardiac patients," they conclude.

Citation: Hermann Nabi, Martin J Shipley, Jussi Vahtera, Martica Hall, Jyrki Korkeila, Michael G Marmot, Mika Kivimäki, Archana Singh-Manoux, 'Effects of depressive symptoms and coronary heart disease and their interactive associations on mortality in middle-aged adults: the Whitehall II cohort study', Heart doi:10.1136/hrt.2010.198507