Breast cancer patients suffering from depression appear to be at somewhat higher risk of dying from the disease, according to Danish researchers.

The researchers conducted a nationwide study of more than 20,000 women to determine the impact of affective or anxiety disorders that necessitated psychiatric hospital admission.

Reporting in the journal Psychomatics, the researchers said women with small tumors had a slightly decreased chance of survival if they became depressed after their diagnosis.

They aalso reported that women with late stage cancer, with larger tumors, were more likely to die if they had been depressed before their diagnosis.

While they were unable to conclude whether depression makes cancer worse or whether cancer makes women depressed, they said their study showed that "breast cancer patients with depression had a modestly but significantly higher risk of mortality depending on stage of breast cancer and time of depression."

Other sources: Psychosomatics