Pain and depressive symptoms linked with cardiovascular risk in Chinese adults

Adults who reported both pain and depressive symptoms had the highest cardiovascular disease risk during nine years of follow-up in a longitudinal study of 13,184 participants from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. The study summary reports that the findings were published online in Scientific Reports on 12 October 2026, adding that the accepted article may undergo further edits before the final version is substituted.

Researchers divided participants aged 45 years or older into four groups according to whether they reported self-reported pain and depressive symptoms. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine the associations of these conditions with new-onset cardiovascular disease, stroke and cardiac events. During the nine-year follow-up, 2,834 participants experienced cardiovascular disease, including 965 stroke events and 2,168 cardiac events.

Compared with participants reporting neither pain nor depressive symptoms, those with depressive symptoms alone had an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.23 for cardiovascular disease, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.11–1.37. Participants reporting pain alone had an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.33 (95% confidence interval, 1.19–1.49). The largest association was seen among participants with both self-reported pain and depressive symptoms, whose adjusted hazard ratio was 1.59 (95% confidence interval, 1.44–1.76).

The abstract also reports additive and multiplicative interactions between pain and depressive symptoms in relation to cardiovascular disease risk. Participants with both conditions had the highest risk of stroke and cardiac events, although the abstract does not provide separate effect estimates for those outcomes. The analysis was observational: the reported hazard ratios describe associations and do not establish that pain or depressive symptoms caused the cardiovascular outcomes. Because the supplied evidence is an abstract and accepted-article summary, the full study methods, covariate definitions and outcome-specific estimates cannot be assessed here.

Subject of Research: Associations of self-reported pain and depressive symptoms with new-onset cardiovascular disease in Chinese adults aged 45 or older

Article Title: Self-reported pain, depressive symptoms and risk for cardiovascular diseases

Article References: Mu, X., Zheng, X., & Cao, M. (2026). Self-reported pain, depressive symptoms and risk for cardiovascular diseases. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-73684-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-73684-4

Keywords: cardiovascular disease, self-reported pain, depressive symptoms, China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, stroke, cardiac events, Cox regression, hazard ratios, longitudinal cohort, Self-reported, pain, depressive