Researchers investigated the link between cardiome-tabolic risk factors and neuroticism in a sample of middle-aged males, the vast majority of whom were white. They found that those who scored higher in neuroticism had more cardiometabolic risk factors at all ages. They say that anxious and worry-prone individuals should pay attention to their cardiome-tabolic health. Anxiety is linked to several cardi-ometabolic conditions, including coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetesTrusted Source, and hyper-tensionTrusted Source. The reasons behind these links and how they develop, however, remain un-clear.
Some studiesTrusted Source have shown that people who are anxious develop increased cardiometabolic risk factors, such as a steeper rise in body mass index (BMI), as they age. Other research suggests that deterioration in cardiometabolic health occurs relatively early in the life of anxious individuals and that this lasts into older age. Establishing how exactly this link works is difficult, as few cohort studies have recorded longitudinal data on anxiety alongside a broad range of cardiometabolic outcomes. In a recent study, researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine led a team of scientists investigating the link between cardiometabolic outcomes and indicators of anxiety. “Our findings indicate [that] higher levels of anxiousness or worry among men are linked to biological processes that may give rise to heart disease and metabolic conditions, and these associations may be present much earlier in life than is commonly appreciated — potentially during childhood or young adulthood,” said Lewina Lee, Ph.D., lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine.
The study was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA)Trusted Source. The researchers obtained data from the Normative Aging StudyTrusted Source, which the Department of Veterans Affairs established in the 1960s.
Alongside cardiometabolic biomarkers, all partici-pants completed a nine-item questionnaire based on the Eysenck Personality Inventory at the start of the study alongside a 20-item questionnaire asking how much they worry about various issues on a scale of 0 to 4. Although the Eysenck Personality Inventory is not a standard test for anxiety, it assesses for neu-roticism, which refers to sensitivity to negative emotion. Experts consider neuroticism a causal factor for anxiety disorders and see worry as a major facet of anxiety and a coping method to prepare for future threats.
