PTSD, a link to veterans' future heart disease- Study

War veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD are at greater risk of heart attacks as they age, a groundbreaking study of military veterans of World War II and Korea suggests.

Conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, the new study has linked post traumatic stress with an increased risk of heart disease. The recent study compliments the existing facts that veterans with PTSD have more autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis and psoriasis.

In their research the scientists included 1,946 male veterans and after observing them they concluded Monday that the more stress a veteran had to deal with, the higher their risk of developing heart disease.

In order to determine the association between stress and one's risk of heart disease, the researchers used common factors associated with varying levels of traumatic stress disorder in their study.

"This pattern of effects suggests that individuals with higher levels of (post-traumatic stress disorder) symptoms are not simply prone to reporting higher levels of chest pain or other physical symptoms but may well be at higher risk for developing coronary heart disease," said lead researcher Laura Kubzansky of the Harvard School of Public Health, who studies anxiety, depression and anger as risk factors for heart disease.

Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs, the latest study appears in Monday's Archives of General Psychiatry.

Kubzansky and her colleagues analyzed data from the Veterans Administration Normative Aging Study, a long-term research project tracking Boston-area vets. They studied the health records of men who completed a 46-item questionnaire measuring PTSD symptoms in 1986 or a 35-item PTSD assessment in 1990. Both questionnaires contained the queries about the PTSD related symptoms such as sleep problems, nightmares, numbness, a heightened sense of being on guard and intrusive memories of traumatic events.

More than 10 to 15 years after completing the questionnaires, the veterans with more PTSD symptoms were at greater risk of developing cardiac attacks. Each step up in symptoms on the 1990 assessment increased the risk of heart attack or chest pain by 18 percent, even after the researchers considered risk factors such as smoking, alcohol use and high blood pressure.

PTSD is a serious, potentially devitalizing condition that can occur in people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event like a natural disaster or a serious accident. It is characterized by anxiety, re-experiences of the event through flashbacks and nightmares and avoidance of stimuli associated with the experience. People suffering from PTSD often remain sleepless, agitated and disturbed, and feel detached or estranged from loved ones.

In a separate study, the researchers noted that soldiers returning from combat in Iraq with PTSD reported worse physical health, more doctor visits and more missed workdays.

Funded by the Army, the study is based on a survey of 2,863 soldiers one year after combat, and appears in today's American Journal of Psychiatry.