Depression causes various inflammatory processes in human body

Mehmet Rami Helvaci 1, Esra Candan 2, Ayse Ceylan 2, Huseyin Sencan 1,
Abdulrazak Abyad 3, Lesley Pocock 4

(1) Specialist of Internal Medicine, MD, Turkey
(2) Manager of Writing and Statistics, Turkey
(3) Middle-East Academy for Medicine of Aging, MD, Lebanon
(4) medi-WORLD International, Australia

Correspondencing author
Prof Dr Mehmet Rami Helvaci, MD
07400, ALANYA, TurkeyPhone: 00-90-506-4708759
Email: mramihelvaci@hotmail.com

Received: April 2023; Accepted: May 2023; Published: June 2023
Citation: Mehmet Rami Helvaci et al. Depression causes various inflammatory processes in human body. Middle East Journal of Nursing 2023; 17(1): 31-41 DOI: 10.5742/MEJN2023.9378032

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ABSTRACT

Background: We tried to understand whether or not there are some relationships between irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic gastritis (CG), depression, and various inflammatory processes in the body.

Method: Consecutive patients with IBS and age and sex-matched control cases were included.

Results: The study included 936 patients with IBS (592 females) and 346 control cases. Mean age of the patients was 41.0 years, and 63.2% of them were female. Although gastric sample biopsies were taken just in suspected cases, CG was diagnosed nearly in all of the patients with the IBS (80.4% vs 15.0%, p<0.001). Interestingly, prevalence of antidepressants use was also higher in the IBS cases, significantly (46.4% vs 16.1%, p<0.001). Similarly, smoking (35.2% vs 20.8%, p<0.001), hemorrhoids (37.1% vs 7.2%, p<0.001), and urolithiasis (22.0% vs 9.5%, p<0.001) were all higher in the IBS patients, again. Beside that the mean values of fasting plasma glucose (FPG) (111.9 vs 105.4 mg/dL, p= 0.002) and plasma triglycerides (167.0 vs 147.3 mg/dL, p= 0.013) were also higher in the IBS patients, significantly.

Conclusion: Because FPG and triglycerides are well-known acute phase reactants in the body, IBS and CG may be some low-grade inflammatory processes initiated with anxiety, depression, infection, inflammation, trauma, and cancer fear-like stresses of the body, and eventually terminate with hemorrhoids and urolithiasis. Due to the highly significant associations between IBS, CG, and depression, IBS and CG may actually be the two sides of the same paper, and just be two examples of depression-induced various inflammatory processes in human body.

Key words: Depression, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic gastritis, irritable gastrointestinal syndrome, smoking, fasting plasma glucose, triglycerides