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Bidirectional relationship between chronic pain and depressive symptoms in middle-aged and older adults
André O Werneck1, Brendon Stubbs2
1Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom; Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health, Department of Nutrition, School of Public Health, Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
Objective:
To assess the bidirectional association between chronic pain and depressive symptoms among middle-aged and older adults from two prospective cohort studies.
Methods:
We used prospective data (12y of follow-up) from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (n = 9149, 5018 women, 65.0 ± 10.2y) and the Health and Retirement Study (n = 16,883, 9810 women, 66.9 ± 10.3y), including data from seven waves of each cohort between 2006 and 2018/2019. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Centre of Epidemiological Studies Depression scale, while chronic pain was estimated using questions about the frequency of being troubled with pain. We used random-intercept cross-lagged panel models to assess the bidirectional association between pain and depressive symptoms, adjusting for potential confounders.
Results:
There was a cross-lagged effect of chronic pain on depressive symptoms (ELSA: β: 0.038; 95%CI: 0.011-0.066. Standardized coefficient (B): 0.021.
Share:
β: 0.044; 95%CI: 0.023-0.065. B: 0.023-0.024) as well as depressive symptoms on pain (ELSA: β: 0.010; 95%CI: 0.002-0.018. B: 0.017-0.019.
Share:
0.011; 95%CI: 0.005-0.017. B: 0.020-0.021). Moreover, there were auto-regressive effects of both chronic pain (ELSA: β: 0.149; 95%CI: 0.128-0.171.
Share:
β: 0.129; 95%CI: 0.112-0.145) and depressive symptoms (ELSA: β: 0.149; 95%CI: 0.130-0.168.
Share:
β: 0.169; 95%CI: 0.154-0.184).
Conclusion:
We identified a modest bidirectional association between depressive symptoms and chronic pain, using two large prospective ageing cohorts.
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