Risk of Suicide Among Patients with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia in South Korea: A Nationwide Retrospective Cohort Study

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Background: Benign prostatic hyperplasia is a commonly diagnosed disease in elderly men, but it is a serious threat to quality of life and causes depression. Our study aims to evaluate the risk of suicide death among patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia relative to a control group comprising individuals without benign prostatic hyperplasia. Methods: We used the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort from 2006 to 2015 comprising of 193,785 Korean adults ≥40 years old, and followed-up for suicide death during the 8.7 years period. Cox-proportional hazard model was used to estimate hazard ratios for suicide among patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia. Outcomes: From 2006 to 2010, a total of 32,215 people were newly diagnosed with benign prostatic hyperplasia. The suicide rate of people without benign prostatic hyperplasia was 61.6 per 100,000 person-years, whereas that of patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia was 97.3 per 100,000 person-years, 1.58 times higher than the control group (p<0.01). After adjusting for covariates, the hazard ratio for suicide among patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia was 1.47 (95% C.I. =1.21 to 1.78; p<0.01) compared to people without benign prostatic hyperplasia. Interpretation: Our study shows that men with benign prostatic hyperplasia had a higher risk of suicide compared to men without benign prostatic hyperplasia in South Korea. This study suggests that care for mental disorders as well as treatment for depressive symptoms might be necessary for patients with benign prostatic hyperplasia. Funding Statement: This study was supported by grant of the National Center for Mental Health (2018-08). Declaration of Interests: On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest. Ethics Approval Statement: The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of National Center for Mental Health (IRB No.116271-2018-32). Our study protocol was exempted from review because it was not a clinical trial, which required contacting the patients, and NHIS-NSC database was anonymized to prevent identification of individuals.