Association of personal and familial suicide risk with low serum cholesterol concentration in male lithium patients.

Abstract

We sought to establish whether low cholesterol concentration may be associated with a personal history of attempted suicide or a family history of completed suicide in psychiatric out-patients on maintenance lithium treatment, who represent a population at risk for suicide. We retrospectively reviewed charts regarding 783 out-patients consecutively admitted to a lithium clinic from 1976 to 1999. Individual age- and gender-specific quartile of serum cholesterol concentration were correlated against personal lifetime suicide attempts and completed suicide in first-degree relatives. The proportion of men with a personal lifetime history of attempted suicide, especially if violent, and that of men with history of completed suicide in a first-degree relative were significantly higher among the group with cholesterol concentration in the lowest quartile compared to the group with cholesterol levels above the 25th percentile. Low cholesterol concentration should be studied further as a potential biological/genetic marker of suicide risk.