Depression, chronic stress, and low levels of social support have known associations
with cardiovascular disease (CVD). Physical activity has been shown to promote psychological
health, reduce the frequency of depressive symptoms, and is associated with fewer
cardiovascular events in depressed subjects with known CVD. The purpose of the present
study was to test the hypothesis that physical activity attenuates the association
between psychosocial factors and incident CVD. The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis
cohort includes 6,814 participants free of clinical CVD at baseline. Complete data
on physical activity were available for 6,795 subjects (mean age 62 years; 47% men).
Psychosocial factors were assessed using standardized questionnaires. Cox proportional
hazard models were used to evaluate the association between psychosocial factors and
CVD events and its modulation by physical activity. In models adjusted for age, gender,
and race/ethnicity, both depression and chronic burden were associated with CVD events
(hazard ratio [HR] = 1.38 [1.04 to 1.84], p = 0.028 for depression; HR = 1.15 [1.05
to 1.24], p = 0.001 for chronic burden). Adjusting for physical activity, the relation
between depression, chronic burden, and CVD events was not significantly reduced (HR =
1.35 [1.02 to 1.80], p = 0.039 for depression; HR = 1.14 [1.05 to 1.23], p = 0.001
for chronic burden). Although physical activity is an important component of physical
and psychological health and well-being, it did not significantly attenuate the strong
relation between depression or chronic burden and incident CVD.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 01, 2016
Accepted:
February 16,
2016
Received in revised form:
February 16,
2016
Received:
September 24,
2015
Footnotes
Funding: This research was supported by Grants N01-HC-95159, N01-HC-95160, N01-HC-95161, N01-HC-95162, N01-HC-95163, N01-HC-95164, N01-HC-95165, N01-HC-95166, N01-HC-95167, N01-HC-95168, and N01-HC-95169 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; Grants UL1-TR-000040 and UL1-TR-001079 from National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), and Grant DGE-1256082 from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.
See page 1550 for disclosure information.
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