DURHAM, N.C., March 9 (UPI) -- Having both depression and type 2 diabetes increases the risk of death for heart patients, a Duke University researcher said in North Carolina.
Researcher Anastasia Georgiades said that having either depression or type 2 diabetes was known to increase the risk of heart disease death. Having both is even more deadly, she said.
A Duke study involving heart patients showed that among type 2 diabetes patients, having high depression scores increased the risk of dying by 20 percent to 30 percent, compared to patients with similar depression scores but no diabetes.
"We found a trend showing that the probability of death increases as the level of depression increases in diabetic patients with coronary artery disease," Georgiades, who presented the results Friday at the annual meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society, in Budapest, Hungary.
"Our data appear to show an important interaction between type 2 diabetes and depression, meaning that physicians should closely monitor their heart patients who have both of these disorders."
