(HealthDay News) --
Heart disease, diabetes and depression can be a lethal triple-play -- boosting
a patient's death risk by 20 percent to 30 percent, new research shows.

"We do not know what this increased risk is due to, but it could either be
that depression influences crucial aspects of self-care behaviors needed to
manage diabetes or that a more severe disease process is reflected in more
depressive symptoms," said lead researcher Anastasia Georgiades, a
research associate in the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Duke
University in Durham, N.C.

Georgiades was expected to present the findings Friday at the American
Psychosomatic Society annual meeting in Budapest, Hungary.

In their study, the Duke team followed 933 heart patients for more than four
years. During that time, there were 135 deaths among patients with type 2
diabetes and/or depression, the researchers found.

Among patients with moderate-to-severe symptoms of depression who were also
diabetics, the researchers observed a significant 30 percent greater risk of
dying over the four-year period compared with patients with either depression
alone or diabetes alone. Read more…