title: Depression and stroke risk.
abstract: Evaluation of: Pan A, Okereke OI, Sun Q et al. Depression and incident stroke in women. Stroke 42(10), 2770-2775 (2011). In the Nurses' Health Study, 80,574 women aged between 54 and 79 years, without a history of stroke, were followed-up from 2000 to 2006. In this cohort, depressive symptoms were assessed at multiple time points utilizing the Mental Health Index score (1992, 1996 and 2000), and clinically significant depressive symptoms were defined as a score ≤ 52. A survey was carried out regarding antidepressant medication use biennially beginning in 1996, and physician-diagnosed depression was reported biennially from 2000. During this 6-year follow-up, 1033 incident strokes were documented. Having a history of depression was associated with an increased risk for total stroke, as well as the use of antidepressant medications with or without history of depression.
authors.affiliation: Stroke Unit and Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Perugia, Santa Maria della Misericordia Hospital, Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, 06126 – Perugia, Italy. vcaso@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Caso
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Santalucia
authors.forename: Francesca Romana
authors.initials: FR
authors.lastname: Pezzella