Panic Attacks Boost Women’s Heart Risk

If you are a woman and are prone to panic attacks, you should watch out for your heart. According to a new report published in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, older women are at increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke if they have had at least one full-blown panic attack. Their risk of dying in the next five years is also quite high.

When a person suffers a panic attack, s/he develops sudden fear, and feels anxious or extremely uncomfortable. There might also be several other symptoms involved. Such attacks may be sporadic in nature or might be part of an anxiety disorder such as panic disorder, social anxiety disorder or phobias.

Between 1997 and 2000, the research team led by Dr. Jordan W. Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston studied 3,369 healthy postmenopausal women between the ages of 51 and 83. The average age of the subjects was 65.9. At the start of the study, all women were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding occurrence of panic attacks in the previous six months.

Around 10% of the study subjects answered in the affirmative to having suffered a full-blown panic attack in the six months before the study. The women were followed for 5.3 years on average to check if they suffered a heart attack or stroke or died due to any cause.

The researchers made adjustments for other cardiovascular risk factors to refine their findings. They found that women who had suffered one or more panic attacks had four times the risk of a myocardial infarction (heart attack) and three times the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke. Their risk of death from any cause was also found to be two times higher.

The researchers found that the risk remained high even after controlling for depression. This led them to hypothesize that panic attacks might be a separate, independent risk factor for cardiovascular events.

The research findings add to the already extensive list of emotions and psychiatric symptoms that have been shown to cause cardiovascular events, including depression, anger and hostility, the researchers noted. In their opinion, panic attacks might also be linked to other cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension. They also believe anxiety could lead to adverse cardiovascular effects, such as coronary artery spasm, tendency toward increased blood clotting or disturbances in heart rhythm.

“These results suggest that panic anxiety is a marker for increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality among postmenopausal women,” the researchers said. “Future studies are needed to clarify the causal connection, if any, between panic attacks and cardiovascular events. Our results imply, however, that older women with a recent history of panic attacks represent a subgroup at elevated risk of myocardial infarction and stroke in whom careful monitoring and cardiovascular risk reduction may be particularly important.”

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