Abstract
Depression is one of the leading causes of disability around the world. Although several studies have been conducted to analyze the association between vitamins and depression, the results have been inconsistent. Based on the database of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (2005–2006), a cross-sectional analysis was conducted to uncover the correlations between serum vitamin concentrations and depression in 2791 participants over 20 years of age. Vitamin concentrations in serum were measured by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a standardized liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) or radioassay kit method. A nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) was used to assess depression symptoms. The binary logistic regression model was applied to analyze the association between vitamins and depression. In the whole population, negative associations were discovered between folate concentrations (p for trend = 0.02), trans-β-carotene (p for trend = 0.01) and depression, while positive associations were found among vitamin B12 concentrations (p for trend = 0.008), vitamin A concentrations (p for trend = 0.01) and depression. In order to evaluate the influence of gender on the pathogenesis of depression of vitamins exposure, we performed gender-stratified analysis. In females, folate concentrations (p for trend = 0.03) and vitamin B12 concentrations (p for trend = 0.02) were correlated with depression. In males, no significant association was found between depression and serum vitamin concentrations. The correlation of vitamins with depression deserves further investigation in larger and diverse populations, especially in females.
Highlights
Depression is a common mental disorder that causes people to lose interest in life, experience persistent sadness, and find themselves unable to carry out daily activities; but is a major mental health problem that represents the biggest share of the world’s burden of disease [1].Int
All the participants endorsed informed consent. 10,348 adults and children were eligible for the present study in National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005–2006. 5549 participants were excluded for a lack of depression score, and 1266 participants were excluded for missing data of level of serum vitamins and covariates. 521 participants under 20 years old were not taken into account due to their different education classifications. 221 pregnancy females were excluded for their physiological influence
We comprehensively investigated the associations between serum vitamin concentrations and depression using sex-specific logistic regression in NHANES 2005–2006
Summary
Depression is a common mental disorder that causes people to lose interest in life, experience persistent sadness, and find themselves unable to carry out daily activities; but is a major mental health problem that represents the biggest share of the world’s burden of disease [1]. Factors contributing to depression include biological, psychological and social environments etc.; among these, diet and nutrition, especially vitamins, largely cause depression. A Japanese cross-sectional study concerning the elderly showed that there was no association between vitamin concentrations and depression in men, but there was an inverse relationship between vitamin concentrations and depression in women [10]. Several studies have investigated the associations between vitamin concentrations and depression, they only focused on representative vitamins or specific age groups. In order to comprehensively assess the correlations between vitamin concentrations and depression, serum concentrations were divided into four groups. We tried to reveal the relationship between the level of diverse serum vitamins and depression, based on lifespan observation (20-year old and older) using the binary logistic regression model
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