Previous studies have shown that depression and heart dis-ease are intertwined, leading the researchers to propose that treating depression could re-duce heart attack risk.

For the study, the researchers assessed depression in a group of 2,466 heart attack patients who were followed up for two and a half years.

They found that patients with somatic and incident depres-sion were likely to have a poor cardiac prognosis.

• European Society of Cardiology conference, Munich 2008.

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