Many mental health disorders
have been found to be associated with abnormalities in heart function and blood
pressure.
A high resting heart rate and blood pressure in
youth predict an increased susceptibility for anxiety disorders, schizophrenia
and obsessive-compulsive disorder later in life, reveals an extensive study
conducted by the University of Helsinki and the Karolinska Institutet in
Stockholm.
The connections
between resting heart rate, blood pressure and psychiatric disorders were
studied using register data from more than one million Swedish men. The study
was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
Many mental
health disorders have been found to be associated with abnormalities in heart
function and blood pressure. Heart rate and blood pressure are regulated by the
autonomic nervous system which controls the body's basic functions. There has
previously been no comprehensive research on whether discrepancies in the
function of the autonomic nervous system could precede the onset of psychiatric
illnesses.
The research
used heart rate and blood pressure measurements from conscripts for the Swedish
army, linked with information from national patient registers. The results
indicate that men whose resting heart rate was higher than 82 beats per minute
during their youth were 69% more likely to later be diagnosed with
obsessive-compulsive disorder than men whose resting heart rate was lower than
62 bpm. The risk for schizophrenia increased by 21% and for anxiety disorders,
18%.
The study
considered several factors that could contribute to the connection, such as
BMI, socioeconomic status, ethnic background, cognitive ability as well as
physical fitness measured through an exercise test. However, these factors did
not fully account for the correlation between psychiatric disorders and heart
rate or blood pressure. The average follow-up period was 32 years.
The study also
shows that low resting heart rate was linked to an increased risk of substance
abuse and convictions for violent crimes.
"These
results are interesting, because they provide new information on the role of
the autonomic nervous system in psychiatric disorders," explains
University of Helsinki postdoctoral researcher Antti Latvala, who led the
project.
Latvala points
out that the mechanisms underlying this connection still require a great deal
of further study.
"Our
observations indicate that differences in physiological responses, such as
stress reactions, are linked to the risk of mental disorders. It is also known
that psychiatric illnesses are associated with an increased risk for
cardiovascular disease. Our results open new opportunities for studying this connection
as well," Latvala says.
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