LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to a U.S. study, 101 heart patients with signs of depression who exercised for 90 minutes a week compared with those who started taking Zoloft both improved significantly. That's the findings of researchers writing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Zoloft, known generically as sertraline and placebos were provided for the study. "The attractiveness of exercise is that it has so many other physical benefits and it ought to be something very highly considered,"

Alan Rozanski of St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospitals in New York writes. Rozanski, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, said exercise can be thought of as another "potent tool on the shelf" to fight depression in heart patients.

Up to 40 percent of heart patients have symptoms of depression, and depression itself has been linked to a higher risk of further heart trouble, the researchers found. There is a growing body of research that suggests that exercise may help.

Researchers published a separate study of over 2,300 people with heart failure randomly assigned to exercise or usual care, which found the extra activity led to modest reductions in depression symptoms.

"We wanted to evaluate exercise and antidepressant medications in patients with heart disease and elevated depressive symptoms," James Blumenthal, the lead researcher on both the current study and the earlier report said.

Patients were separated into three groups. Thirty-seven went to supervised exercise sessions three times per week for a total of 90 minutes, 40 were given Zoloft and 24 took a placebo, with each intervention lasting four months.

Test subjects' depression scores were graded on a standard scale from 0 to 68, where 0 to 8 is considered normal and higher scores reflect more severe depression.

Each group's average score ranged from about 13.5 to 14.5 before the study began.

Depression symptoms improved across the board over time, but participants in the exercise and medication groups saw a bigger benefit than those on the placebo. Depression scores fell by 6.1 points in the Zoloft group, by 7.5 points among exercisers and by 4.5 points in the placebo group.

Exercisers were also less likely to be tired or report sexual problems than people on antidepressants, the researchers said.

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