Newswise — Inflammatory bowel disease patients who also suffer from depression may be more prone to regular flare-ups of the disease than those with fewer depression symptoms, according to new research.
The small study published in the January/February issue of Psychosomatic Medicine suggests that depression coupled with anxiety and lower quality of life may push IBD patients to relapse sooner and more often after a period of successful remission.
Clemens Dejaco, M.D., and colleagues at the University Hospital of Vienna, Austria, found that depressed IBD patients had significantly more relapse episodes 12 and 18 months after a period of remission.
Depressed patients also experienced their first relapse an average of 97 days after remission, compared with 362 days for non-depressed patients.
Inflammatory bowel disease includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. People with IBD experience alternating flare-ups and remissions of the chronic condition, for which there is no known cure.
Earlier studies have not found a definite link between stress and IBD flare-ups, but "many patients attach importance to psychological factors, particularly stress, as contributory to the onset and course of the disease," Dejaco says.
The study by Dejaco and colleagues and colleagues is the first to examine depression and IBD flare-ups over the long term. The researchers tracked the physical and mental health of 60 patients at three-month intervals. At the start of the study, 28 percent of the patients scored high on tests for depression. 59 percent had at least one relapse in the 18 months.
The researchers found no correlation between a patient's depression and the number of disease flare ups she or he had experienced before the latest remission.
The study was supported by Grant Hochschuljubiläumsstiftung.
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