Physicians treating current and former military service members may need to consider how post-traumatic stress disorders could be affecting their patients’ hearts.
 
A study, partially funded by the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, found that male twin Vietnam War veterans diagnosed with PTSD (compared to those without PTSD) were more than twice as likely to develop heart disease.
 
PTSD can trigger “increased blood pressure, heart rate, and heartbeat rhythm abnormalities that in susceptible individuals could lead to a heart attack,” said lead researcher Viola Vaccarino, M.D., Ph.D., professor in the department of medicine at Emory University and chair of the department of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health, in an NIH press release.
 
The study will be published in the September print edition of the Journal of American College of Cardiology.
 
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