Depression and cancer risk....

Your Article Summary

Depression and cancer risk: 24 years of follow-up of the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area sample (>> click to go to the journal's website)
Cancer Causes and Control, 11/09/09
Gross AL et al. - Results reveal a specificity to the association between depression and hormonally mediated cancers, which provides support to hypotheses about a common biological pathway between depression and cancer. Methods
  • Population-based sample of 3,177 cancer-free adults from Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study followed for 24 years.
  • Cox proportional hazards models used to estimate relative hazards for both overall and subtype-specific cancers among those with history of depression
Results
  • Risk set contained 334 incident cancer cases and 40,530 person-years of observation
  • DIS/DSM-III major depression associated with higher hazard for overall cancer (HR: 1.9, 95% CI: 1.2, 3.0) and statistically significant increased hazard for breast cancer (HR: 4.4, 95% CI: 1.08, 17.6) among women
  • Positive association between history of depression and prostate cancer
  • Confidence bounds included null
  • No reliable associations found between colon, lung, or skin cancers and depression
  • Pattern of results similar for dysphoria, but not for phobia or other mental disorders studied

No comments:

Post a Comment