The symptom profile of vascular depression

Vascular depression is regarded as a subtype of depression, especially in--but not limited strictly to--older persons, and characterized by a specific clinical presentation and an association with (cerebro)vascular risk and disease. It is also known that depression is a risk factor in the development of myocardial infarction. The possibility of identifying depressed subjects at risk of a first cardiac event by their clinical presentation in general practice would have significant implications.

We studied the baseline depression symptom profiles of subjects in the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam and compared the profile of depressed subjects who had and had not suffered a first cardiac event at a follow-up after eight years.

We could not confirm the specific symptom profile in depressed subjects who suffered from a first cardiac event at follow-up. Most notably, the presumed specific symptoms of vascular depression, psychomotor retardation, and anhedonia were not significantly associated with the occurrence of a first cardiac event at follow-up.

In this large community study we failed to identify a difference in the depression symptom profile between incident cardiac and non-cardiac cases.