May 26, 2015 06:05 PM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Depression may be associated with a significant increase in the risk of death, according to a recent study Fox News reported. 

Researchers found that moderate to severe depression is associated with a 5-fold increased risk of all cause mortality in patients with heart failure. They also found that risk was independent of comorbidities and severity of heart failure. Patients who were not depressed had an 80 percent lower mortality risk.

"Patients with heart failure are at high risk of recurrent hospital admissions and death. Approximately 25 percent of patients admitted to hospital with heart failure are readmitted for a variety of reasons within one month. Within one year, most patients will have had one or more readmissions and almost half will have died," John Cleland, chief investigator of the study, said in a statement.

For the study, researchers analyzed data from a questionnaire which showed that 103 patients were not depressed (score 0-7), 27 had mild depression (score 8-10) and 24 had moderate to severe depression (score 11-21). Over a mean follow up of 302 days, 27 patients died, Mirror Daily reported.

They found that moderate to severe depression remained an important predictor of all-cause mortality even after controlling for sex, age, hypertension, severity of heart failure (assessed by NT-proBNP) and comorbidities. Patients with a low HADS-D score (0-7) had an 80% lower risk of death.

"Our results show that depression is strongly associated with death during the year following discharge from hospital after an admission for the exacerbation of heart failure; we expect that the link persists beyond one year. The association was independent of the severity of heart failure or the presence of comorbidities," Cleland said.

The findings were presented at the main annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association.

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