Study finds autoimmune diseases increase risk of mood disorders
People living with an autoimmune disease are nearly twice as likely to suffer from mood problems like depression, anxiety or bipolar disorder, a new large-scale study says.
The risk of mood disorders is 87% to 97% higher in people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and Graves' syndrome, researchers reported Tuesday in the BMJ Mental Health.
This risk remains higher even after accounting for other factors like age, income and family history of psychiatric disorders, researchers found.
"Together, these results support the hypothesis that exposure to chronic inflammation may be associated with a greater risk for affective disorders," concluded the research team led by Arish Mudra Rakshasa-Loots with the University of Edinburgh Center for Clinical Brain Sciences in Britain.
For the study, researchers drew on data from 1.5 million people participating in a new large-scale British health study. Upon recruitment to the ongoing study, people provided a history of their physical and mental health.
In all, more than 37,800 of the study participants reported living with an autoimmune condition.
About 29% of people with an autoimmune illness said they'd been previously diagnosed with a mood disorder, compared with 18% of the general population, results show.
This included more than 25% versus 15% diagnosed with depression, and 21% versus nearly 13% diagnosed with anxiety.
Women with autoimmune diseases were particularly vulnerable to mood disorders, affecting 32% compared with 21% among men, results show.
"Theories suggest that sex hormones, chromosomal factors, and differences in circulating antibodies may partly explain these sex differences," researchers wrote.
Women with depression tend to have higher levels of inflammatory chemicals in their bloodstream, researchers noted.
"It is therefore possible that women may experience the compounding challenges of increased occurrence of autoimmunity and stronger effects of immune responses on mental health, resulting in the substantially higher prevalence of affective disorders observed in this study," the team wrote.
Given these results, it might be worth regularly checking people with an autoimmune disease for mood disorders, researchers concluded.
"Regular screening for mental health conditions may be integrated into clinical care for people who are diagnosed with autoimmune diseases, and especially women with these diagnoses, to enable early detection of affective disorders and delivery of tailored mental health interventions," researchers wrote.
Further studies should be done to determine other problems linked to autoimmune diseases -- like chronic pain, fatigue, sleep disruptions and social isolation - contribute to the risk for mood disorders, researchers added.
More information
The U.S. Pain Foundation has more on autoimmune diseases and mental health.
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