A collaborated study conducted by researchers of Harvard University and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found that emotional stress can increase the risk of cardiovascular events and suicide in patients with newly-detected prostate cancer.

The findings of the study were based on a comprehensive analysis of data pertaining to 168,584 Swedish men diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1961 and 2004. Out of these men, as many as 10,126, or 6 percent, experienced a cardiovascular incidence within a year of being diagnosed of the cancer, while 136, or 0.08 percent, committed suicide.

Though the cases of post-prostate-cancer-diagnosis suicide are rather rare, doctors opine that the probability still necessitates the need for more careful monitoring and communication with patients after their cancer diagnosis.

Commenting on the findings of the study, Dr. Meir Stampfer, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: “Stress can be an important trigger for physiologic reactions, including increased risk of cardiovascular disease. The diagnosis of cancer also can cause high enough stress to see a noticeable increase in both heart disease and suicide.”

Noting that the possibility of heart disease and suicidal thoughts are not the only potential problems that men face after a prostate cancer diagnosis, Bruce MacDonald, a social worker at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, said that many men undergo depression due to prostate-treatment resulting impotence and a lack of libido.