Personality Disorders and Atherosclerotic Coronary Plaque

pp. 36-40

Abstract

Background
The association between the essential substrate of ischemic cardiovascular disease, atherosclerotic lesions, and psychosocial factors has been scarcely studied. No specific studies on the association between personality disorders defined according to international diagnostic criteria and presence of atherosclerotic plaque are found in the literature.

Objectives
The purpose of this study was to analyze the association between personality disorders and presence of coronary atherosclerotic plaques, describing and comparing the personality of subjects with and without atherosclerotic plaque.

Methods
A descriptive transverse design was used. Seventy-eight patients with ages ranging from 40 to 90 years who met the inclusion and exclusion criteria participated in the study. Data were acquired from a coronariography with 64-multislice computed tomography and the Salamanca Questionnaire for screening personality disorders. SPSS 12.0 was used to describe and compare personality disorders in the groups with and without coronary atherosclerotic plaque.

Results
Seventy seven percent of the patients presented personality disorder and plaque, while 23% had plaque and no personality disorder. Statistically significant associations (at a two-tailed p <0.05) were found between coronary atherosclerotic plaque and: a) histrionic personality disorder, Spearman´s rho: 0.250, p=0.027; b) anxious or avoidant personality disorder, rho: 0.232, p=0.041, and c) number of personality disorders, rho: 0.286, p=0.011. Statistically significant differences were found between groups with plaque and without plaque for histrionic personality disorder (chi-square test 4.872, two-tailed p=0.027) and anxious or avoidant personality disorder (chi-square: 4.181, p=0.041).

Conclusion
In the studied sample, the histrionic and anxious personality disorders showed statistically significant differences between the groups with and without coronary atherosclerotic plaque.