title: Anxiety as a risk factor in cardiovascular disease.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The narrative review covers recent studies of anxiety as a companion in cardiovascular disease.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Prospective population-based studies and studies of cases with known cardiovascular disease have been conducted, as well as studies of intervention with coronary bypass grafting, heart transplants, and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, and subsequent rehabilitation programs. Mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia (MSIMI) stands for this emerging research arena.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Anxiety has emerged as perhaps the most important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, determining other known risk factors, such as depression, substance use, overweight, and a sedentary lifestyle. Anxiety also increases the risk of major cardiac events in coronary heart disease. There is a need for elucidating the influence of anxiety in takotsubo and in white-coat hypertension. Managing anxiety is of vital importance in patients who have received heart transplants, to ascertain adherence to immunosuppressants.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Section of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet, Karolinska University Hospital Huddinge, Huddinge, Sweden.
authors.forename: Christer
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Allgulander
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000150:complications*; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications*