Washington, Mar 10 : Depression, anger and hostility may be red flags of increased risk of heart disease, warns a new study.

According to Journal of the American College of Cardiology study, the `hate emotions' are significantly associated with both a higher risk for coronary heart disease (CHD) in healthy individuals and poorer outcomes in patients with existing heart disease.

"Anger and hostility were found to predict a 19 percent and 24 percent increase in CHD events among initially healthy people and those with pre-existing CHD, respectively," says Yoichi Chida, M. D., Ph. D., Department of Epidemiology & Public Health, University College, London, UK.

"The harmful association of anger and hostility with CHD events in healthy people was greater in men than women. This suggests that the accumulation of stress responses in daily life might have a greater impact on future CHD in men," the expert added.

Authors extensively reviewed the literature on the longitudinal associations of anger and hostility with CHD events, and identified 25 studies of initially healthy populations and 18 studies of patients with CHD. While the damaging effects of these emotions have been widely asserted, previous reviews have been inconclusive.

Interestingly, there was no longer a significant association of anger and hostility with CHD when researchers performed a subgroup analysis of the studies that controlled for behavioral covariates (e. g., smoking, physical activity or body mass index, socioeconomic status) and disease treatment, suggesting that the major pathway between anger and hostility and CHD might be behavioral risk factors. (ANI)