Association Between Somatic Depressive Symptoms and Endothelial Dysfunction in Healthy Individuals

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular disease research
• Psychosomatic medicine
• Endothelial function studies

Background:

• Depressive symptoms (DS) are linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD).
• Somatic depressive symptoms (SDS) show a stronger association with CVD than other DS clusters.
• Endothelial dysfunction (ED), a precursor to CVD, is influenced by traditional risk factors but its link to SDS in healthy individuals is unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between Somatic Depressive Symptoms (SDS) and endothelial function.
• To determine if SDS predict endothelial dysfunction (ED) in healthy, non-depressed individuals.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study of 132 healthy adults (aged 18-60) without CVD.
• Endothelial function assessed via brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD).
• Depressive symptoms evaluated using PHQ-9, distinguishing somatic and affective symptoms; regression models used to identify predictors of FMD and ED.

Main Results:

• Somatic Depressive Symptoms (SDS) were the strongest predictor of lower FMD (β=-0.329, P<0.001).
• Affective depressive symptoms (ADS) and body surface area also predicted lower FMD.
• Logistic regression confirmed SDS as the strongest predictor of endothelial dysfunction (ED) (P=0.001).

Conclusions:

• Somatic Depressive Symptoms (SDS) are significantly associated with endothelial dysfunction (ED), outperforming other risk factors.
• The findings suggest that assessing SDS may aid in identifying individuals at elevated risk for developing cardiovascular disease (CVD).
• This highlights the importance of considering somatic aspects of depression in cardiovascular risk assessment.