NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Anxiety appears to increase the risk of heart attacks and death in patients who have coronary artery disease, researchers from the United States report.Coronary artery disease is caused by plaque build-up on the inside walls of the arteries that supply blood and oxygen to the heart, causing them to harden and narrow. This can lead to heart attack, angina (chest pain) and other serious complications. A number of studies have looked at the toll that mental stress takes on cardiac health, but most have focused on depression, not anxiety. The few studies that have examined the role that anxiety might play in heart disease have usually measured anxiety only once, not over the course of time, according to a report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

This study involved 516 patients with heart disease who completed a standard anxiety questionnaire annually for an average of 3.4 years. The study group was 82 percent male with an average age of 68 years.