In a second report in the same issue of the journal, researchers combined data from 20 studies, including a total of almost 250,000 healthy people from Norway, the Netherlands, Russia, Sweden, Japan, and Britain. The participants were followed for an average of about 11 years by a team led by Annelieke Roest of Tilburg University, in the Netherlands.
In this study, people with anxiety had a 26% increase in the risk of heart disease and a 48% increase in the risk of dying of heart-related causes.
There was also a hint of an association between anxiety and nonfatal heart attacks, but this information was based only on five studies and was not statistically significant.
Still, there may be something physicians and their patients can do, which they probably should be doing anyway.
“If a person has a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder, such as panic disorder or phobia—not if they’re just nervous or tense—I would be more likely to tighten up on lipid levels and blood pressure,” says Lawrence Hergot, MD, professor of medicine and director of general cardiology, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, in Denver.
