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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been identified as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) even in studies controlling for traditional CVD risk factors such as smoking, hypertension, and diabetes. Using time-dependent covariate analyses that controlled for other disorders, researchers examined Veterans Health Affairs (VA) electronic medical records from 2519 patients with PTSD diagnoses and 1659 patients without PTSD aged between 30 and 70 (87% men). PTSD patients were seen at least twice in a PTSD clinic.
Researchers determined PTSD severity via PTSD Checklist (PCL) scores and incident CVD over 3 years via International Classification of Diseases–9 codes for CVD (hypertensive heart disease, myocardial infarction, ischemic h…