Blunted cardiovascular reactions are a predictor of negative health outcomes: A prospective cohort study

Abstract

The study examined whether cardiovascular responses to psychological stress tests predict future anxiety and depression scores 40-months later. Hemodynamic measures were obtained from 102 healthy adults before, during and after mental arithmetic, a speech task, and a cold pressor task. The 14-item Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale was administered at initial testing and at 40-months follow-up. At initial testing analyses revealed that high anxiety symptoms were characterized by blunted cardiovascular reactions to acute mental stress, particularly mental arithmetic. Furthermore, after adjustment for baseline blood pressure (BP), baseline anxiety levels and traditional risk factors, attenuated systolic BP responses to mental arithmetic were associated with future anxiety levels (ΔR2 = .055). These findings suggest that blunted cardiovascular reactions to stress may be an independent risk factor for future anxiety levels

Attenuated Cardiovascular Reactivity to Acute Psychological Stress Predicts Future Fatigue Symptoms in Truck Drivers

“…One prospective study that observed HR reactivity was inversely associated with depressive symptoms had measured participants five years later, thus a longer duration than the current study 24 . Similarly to our findings, others have also found no association between CVR and depression after a shorter interval (40 months) 25 . It is possible that depressive symptoms may manifest following a longer duration between baseline and follow-up measures.…”

“…Most studies examining associations between CVR and health outcomes have used cross-sectional designs, which are unable to make a causal inference. In the few prospective studies in this area, attenuated CVR to stress is associated with higher future depression 23,24 and anxiety symptoms, 23,25 but no prospective studies have examined CVR to psychological stress and its association with future fatigue, with no prospective studies examining CVR in truck drivers.…”

Psychological stress reactivity and future health and disease outcomes: A systematic review of prospective evidence

“…Self-report, mental health and cognitive outcomes were always predicted by blunted as opposed to exaggerated reactivity. Blunted cardiovascular reactivity predicted poorer outcomes for selfreported illness frequency (Lawler and Schmied, 1992), self-reported health (Phillips et al, 2009), progression of self-reported physical disability (Phillips et al, 2011a), more depression symptoms (Phillips et al, 2011b), more anxiety symptoms (Yuenyongchaiwat and Sheffield, 2017) and poorer cognitive ability (Ginty et al, 2011;Yuichiro et al, 2016). Blunted HPA axis reactivity was also implicated, with blunted salivary cortisol reactivity predicting more PTSD symptomology in male soldiers following exposure to new-onset traumatic events during military deployment to Afghanistan (Steudte-Schmiedgen et al, 2015).…”

Threat-related motivational disengagement: Integrating blunted cardiovascular reactivity to stress into the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat

“…Blunted CVR to acute psychological stress has been associated with several unfavorable physical and mental health outcomes. The main focus of this article is clinical depression (e.g., de Rooij, 2013;Phillips, 2011;Salomon et al, 2013), but other outcomes include poor performance (Dixon et al, 2019), anxiety symptoms (Yuenyongchaiwat & Sheffield, 2017), low cognitive ability , eating disorders Koo-Loeb et al, 1998), obesity, poor self-reported health, poor lung function (de Rooij, 2013;Phillips, 2011), disability status (Phillips et al, 2011), smoking (Wiggert et al, 2016), study disengagement (Ginty et al, 2015), and type D personality (Kelly-Hughes et al, 2014). Given the chronicity of many of these outcomes, blunted CVR itself might be a chronic phenomenon in some cases.…”