Patients with depression appear to have an impaired ability to recover their heart rate variability following acute coronary syndromes such as heart attack, a factor that could increase their risk of coronary death, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, patients who are treated with antidepressants or whose mood lifts may experience more of an improvement in heart rate variability than those who are untreated or remain depressed.
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