Comparing Cognitive and Somatic Symptoms of Depression in Myocardial Infarction Patients and Depressed Patients in Primary and Mental Health Care

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 8; no. 1; p. e53859
• Main Authors: Groenewold, Nynke A., Doornbos, Bennard, Zuidersma, Marij, Vogelzangs, Nicole, Penninx, Brenda W. J. H., Aleman, André, de Jonge, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 14.01.2013; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Adult; Age; Analysis; Antidepressants; Cardiac patients; Cardiovascular disease; Cardiovascular diseases; Cognition; Cognitive ability; Covariance; Data processing; Depressive Disorder - complications; Depressive Disorder - diagnosis; Depressive Disorder - physiopathology; Depressive Disorder - therapy; Etiology; Female; Health care; Heart attack; Humans; Male; Medical diagnosis; Medical research; Medicine; Mental depression; Mental disorders; Mental health; Mental health care; Mental health services; Mental Health Services - statistics & numerical data; Middle Aged; Myocardial infarction; Myocardial Infarction - complications; Patients; Phenomenology; Primary Health Care - statistics & numerical data; Retrospective Studies; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Studies; Netherlands
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0053859

Depression in myocardial infarction patients is often a first episode with a late age of onset. Two studies that compared depressed myocardial infarction patients to psychiatric patients found similar levels of somatic symptoms, and one study reported lower levels of cognitive/affective symptoms in myocardial infarction patients. We hypothesized that myocardial infarction patients with first depression onset at a late age would experience fewer cognitive/affective symptoms than depressed patients without cardiovascular disease. Combined data from two large multicenter depression studies resulted in a sample of 734 depressed individuals (194 myocardial infarction, 214 primary care, and 326 mental health care patients). A structured clinical interview provided information about depression diagnosis. Summed cognitive/affective and somatic symptom levels were compared between groups using analysis of covariance, with and without adjusting for the effects of recurrence and age of onset. Depressed myocardial infarction and primary care patients reported significantly lower cognitive/affective symptom levels than mental health care patients (F (2,682) = 6.043, p = 0.003). Additional analyses showed that the difference between myocardial infarction and mental health care patients disappeared after adjusting for age of onset but not recurrence of depression. These group differences were also supported by data-driven latent class analyses. There were no significant group differences in somatic symptom levels. Depression after myocardial infarction appears to have a different phenomenology than depression observed in mental health care. Future studies should investigate the etiological factors predictive of symptom dimensions in myocardial infarction and late-onset depression patients.