Association of serum lipid levels with depression

Abstract

Introduction and Objectives: Depression is a type of mood disorder. It is considered as one among the major health problems worldwide as it is highly prevalent in general population and leads to significant loss of quality of life and social functioning in the affected individual. It has been postulated that changes in the cholesterol content of the synaptosomal membrane leads to decrease in the number of serotonin receptors due to decrease in cholesterol concentration leading to depression. Nevertheless, there are contradictory opinions about the association of serum lipid levels and depression. Thus, the present study was undertaken to study the association of serum lipid levels with depression. Materials and Methods: A case control study was conducted including 100 age and sex matched diagnosed cases of depression and 100 age and sex matched healthy individuals as controls. In all the subjects, serum levels of triglycerides (TG) was estimated by GPO-PAP method, total cholesterol (TC) by CHOD-PAP method, LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) by direct assay and HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) by CHOD-PAP method. Results were expressed as mean SD. Student’s independent t-test was used for comparing the means of two groups. Relationship between parameters was assessed by Pearson’s correlation coefficient by using SPSS (Statistical package for social sciences) software version 19. For all the tests, the probability value (p-value) of less than 0.05 is considered statistically significant. Results: Serum levels of TC were significantly lower in cases of depression compared to controls and found no difference with TG, LDL-C and HDL-C levels. We also observed from the results that, there was a negative correlation between TG, TC, LDL-C and HRSD scores which was found to be highly significant statistically. Conclusion: In conclusion, serum TC level was significantly lower in depression cases compared to controls and also has high negative correlation with HRSD score. Thus, the patients wi