title: The association of depressive symptoms and ischemic heart disease in older adults is not moderated by gender, marital status or education.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate whether the association of depression and ischemic heart disease (IHD) is moderated by gender, marital status or education.
  
  
  METHODS
  Data from the 1998 Medicare Health Outcome Survey (HOS) with a 2 year follow-up were re-analyzed. 63,965 older adults who had not reported IHD at baseline were included. Logistic regression analysis modelled the effects of depression, somatic risk factors, and demographic variables on IHD after 2 years.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Two year reported incidence of IHD was 6.2%. Depression was associated with a 1.53-fold risk of developing IHD after controlling for somatic risk factors and demographic variables. Male gender, lower than high-school education, and being married were associated with IHD. Neither of these variables yielded significant interactions with depression, nor did any of the higher-order interaction terms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The association of depression and IHD seems independent from pivotal demographic variables. Possibly the impact of psychosocial factors in this sample of older people is weak compared to medical conditions and age. Also the possibility exists that a common factor such as a shared genetic vulnerability contributes to both depressive symptoms and IHD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Quality Management and Social Medicine, University Medical Center of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany. oskar.mittag@uniklinik-freiburg.de
authors.forename: Oskar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Mittag
authors.forename: Thorsten
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Meyer
mesh_terms: D003863:Depression / Q000150:complications*; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D017202:Myocardial Ischemia / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D016017:Odds Ratio; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology