Impact of chronic stress on cardiovascular system: Libyan conflict health perspective. Part one: Types of chronic stresses

Abstract

Recent studies have provided clear and convincing evidence that chronic stress contributes significantly to the pathogenesis and expression of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). This bibliography is a systematic review on the impact of chronic stress on the cardiovascular system with a special reflection on the Libyan conflict. It is divided into two parts, Part 1 deals with types of chronic stresses, while Part 2 deals with mechanisms involved in chronic stress and their treatments. Medline/PubMed, Google Scholar, and Scopus databases were used to search for peer-reviewed papers dealing with the review theme. Stress can be classified into acute stress and chronic stress. Chronic stress can stem from underlying factors such as economic stress, social isolation stress, posttraumatic stress, and job strain stress. Economic stress is emerging as an important determinant of perceived health where different studies have found an inverse trend between risk factor burden and cardiovascular disease prevalence in urban and rural communities in high-, middle-, and low-income regions. Social stress is another factor that has been reported to be associated with a 2–3 fold increase in the incidence of CVD. Moreover, multiple studies have shown that patients suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder have increased resting heart rate, increased startle reaction, and increased blood pressure as responses to traumatic events. CVD is one of the health outcomes whose links with work stress have been well established based on numerous prospective studies.