Associations between trait anxiety, insulin resistance, and atherosclerosis in the elderly: A pilot cross-sectional study

Increased anxiety levels predict a worse endothelial function in patients with lifetime panic disorder: Results from a naturalistic follow-up study

“…Two previous studies found negative associations between anxiety traits and symptoms and %FMD, but both included samples with known CVD and assessed endothelial function cross-sectionally [2,3]. Unlike both studies, we found no significant associations between current levels of anxiety and %FMD.…”

“…While two studies found negative associations between anxiety symptoms and %FMD [2,3], another study failed to do the same [4]. Notwithstanding inconsistent results, none of the studies was longitudinal, nor included a sample free of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), nor patients with a structured diagnosis of lifetime panic disorder (PD).…”

Carotid atherosclerosis in depression and anxiety: Associations for age of depression onset

“…Some studies found depression to be associated with higher CIMT (Tiemeier et al 2004;Elovainio et al 2005;Chen et al 2006;Stewart et al 2007;Whipple et al 2009) and plaques (Paterniti et al 2001;Jones et al 2003;Spitzer et al 2008), whereas others found no signifi cant association for CIMT (Jones et al 2003;Spitzer et al 2008;Rice et al 2009) or plaque (Tiemeier et al 2004). With the exception of one study (Paterniti et al 2001), anxiety has not been associated with increased carotid atherosclerosis (Matthews et al 1998;Jones et al 2003;Narita et al 2008;Stewart et al 2007). …”

Depression, Vascular Conditions and Chronicity

“…Literature on the association between depression and other markers of subclinical atherosclerosis shows a similar inconclusiveness as the ABI research. Some studies -based on middle-aged or older individuals -have shown a positive association between depression and CIMT (Chen et al 2006;Elovainio et al 2005;Paterniti et al 2001;Stewart et al 2007;Tiemeier et al 2004;Whipple et al 2009), whereas other studies have found no association (Jones et al 2003;Matthews et al 1998;Narita et al 2008;Rice et al 2009;Seldenrijk et al 2011a;Spitzer et al 2008). Likewise, depression has been associated with coronary or aortic calcification in some (Agatisa et al 2005;Hamer et al 2010;Matthews et al 2010;Tiemeier et al 2004), but not in other (Diez Roux et al 2006;O'Malley et al 2000) studies.…”