Hypertension
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Baseline depressive symptoms are not associated with clinically important levels of incident hypertension during two years of follow-up: the multi-ethnic study of atherosclerosis.
Previous longitudinal cohort studies have suggested an association between baseline depressive symptoms and incident hypertension. We assessed this possible association using data from the Multi-ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, a population-based prospective cohort study of 6814 US adults from 4 different racial/ethnic groups. Baseline users of antihypertensive medications and participants lost to follow-up were excluded leaving 3914 participants. ⋯ Using relative risk regression, patients with baseline depressive symptoms did not have an increased risk of incident hypertension (relative risk: 1.02; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.99 to 1.05), although an association between tricyclic antidepressants and hypertension (relative risk: 1.20; 95% CI: 1.05 to 1.37) was observed in subgroup analysis. Depression, even after adjustment for covariates, was associated with small changes in systolic (+2.4 mm Hg; 95% CI: 0.2 to 4.7) and diastolic (+0.8 mm Hg; 95% CI: -0.6 to 2.3) blood pressures. Depressive symptoms may be associated with slight increases in blood pressure in this multiethnic cohort, but it is premature to conclude much without longer studies in other populations.