Title

Association between arterial stiffness, stress and depression among undergraduate medical students in India

Authors

A Logesh Priyan¹, M.V. Shobha*¹, Jagadamba Aswathappa¹, Ashwini K Shetty¹ & C Rutha Sneha²

Affiliation

¹Department of Physiology, Sri Devraj urs Academy of Higher Education & Research, Tamaka, Kolar, Karnataka, India; ²Department of Physchiatry, Sri Devraj urs Academy of Higher Education & Research, Tamaka, Kolar, Karnataka, India; *Corresponding author

Email

A Logesh Priyan - E-mail: logeshpriyan1050@gmail.com
M.V. Shobha - E-mail: shobha@sduaher.ac.in
Jagadamba Aswathappa - E-mail: jagadamba@sduaher.ac.in
Ashwini K Shetty - E-mail: ashwinikshetty@sduaher.ac.in
Rutha Sneha - E-mail: ruthsneha@sduaher.ac.in

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received November 15, 2025; Revised December 15, 2025; Accepted December 15, 2025, Published December 15, 2025

Abstract

Arterial stiffness independently predicts cardiovascular events, with psychological factors potentially contributing to early vascular alterations in young populations. Therefore, it is of interest to investigate of 153 undergraduate medical students to examine relationships between psychological stress, depression and arterial stiffness measures (brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity, carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity, brachial-ankle stiffness index and ankle-brachial index) assessed via Beck's Depression Inventory and Perceived Stress Scale. Our findings revealed mild depression in 92.2% and mild stress in 83.7% of participants, demonstrating significant associations between depression scores and average baPWV (r=0.028, p=0.030), CFPWV (r=0.030, p=0.015), average BASI (r=0.085, p=0.029) and average ABI (r=0.333, p<0.001). Thus, we show that psychological screening tools may function as early cardiovascular risk markers, supporting implementation of comprehensive mental health and cardiovascular prevention initiatives for medical students.

Keywords

Arterial stiffness, pulse wave velocity, depression, stress, medical students, cardiovascular risk

Citation

Priyan et al. Bioinformation 21(12): 4934-4938 (2025)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.