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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

An Unpredictable Chronic Mild Stress Protocol for Instigating Depressive Symptoms, Behavioral Changes and Negative Health Outcomes in Rodents
Published on: December 2, 2015
Major depressive disorder with anger attacks and cardiovascular risk factors
Renerio Fraguas1, Dan V Iosifescu, Bettina Bankier
1Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA. rfraguas@hcnet.usp.br
Objective:
Depression and anger have been separately associated with cardiovascular risk factors. We investigated if major depressive disorder (MDD) with concomitant anger attacks was associated with cardiovascular risk factors.
Method:
We measured total serum cholesterol, glycemia, resting blood pressure, and smoking parameters in 333 (52.9% women) MDD nonpsychotic outpatients, mean age of 39.4 years. MDD was diagnosed with the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID) in accordance with the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised (DSM-III-R). The presence of anger attacks was established with the Massachusetts General Hospital Anger Attacks Questionnaire.
Results:
In a logistic regression analysis, anger attacks were independently associated with cholesterol levels > or = 200 mg/dL (odds ratio [OR], 2.16; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.18-3.94) and years of smoking > 11 (OR, 2.59; 95% CI, 1.32-5.04).
Conclusions:
MDD with anger attacks was significantly associated with increased cholesterol levels and years of smoking.
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